severe and multiple disability

The term Severe and multiple disabilities have referred as a low incidence that is in the society only few people can have it. There is no widely acceptable definition of severe and multiple disabilities, most definition includes three criteria’s, which are.
· Test of intellectual function,
· Developmental progress, and
· Extent of education needs.
The IDEA defines multiple disabilities as
“Concomitant impairment (such as mental-blindness, mental retardation orthopedic impairment e.t.c) such combination of which causes such severe educational problems that they cannot be accommodated in special education programs solely for one of the impairments. The term does not include deaf-blindness”

The group of my choice is the children/learners with mental retardation and blind. There level of severity is mild mental retardation and low vision, there level have been determined by assessment in the adaptive behavior as in Tanzania we don’t have clear and acceptable I.Q assessment.
Mild mental retarded children have been divided in to two terms especially in the school setting these are “educable mental retardation which refers to students whose abilities were adequate for them to profit from an academically oriented curriculum and trainable mental retardation refers to students whose program emphasized the training of basic functional skills like self help skills” (smith, 2002) in this group of children with mild mental retardation and blind they need all kinds of program that will educate and train them this is because the level of their disabilities is mild and there fore they can acquire knowledge and trained to live in the society independently.
The program that can suit children with mild mental retardation and low vision is personal social skills this skills include play skills, interaction skills, group participation, sexual behavior, self direction, responsibility, leisure activities, and expression of emotions.
This program can help a learner or a child to interact with other people in the society, it also teach how a child can express his/her emotions especially when he/she is angry happy unhappy or sad, then through this program a child can know his/her self direction and responsibilities in the society just because children with mild mental retardation and blindness are educable they can learn and live independently in the society.


Moreover these skills can help a child to participate in-group activities like playing with his/her peers and other activities given by teacher like classroom activities, how to draw pictures how to write there names e.t.c. Children can learn how to follow orders given by their fellow, teacher, or their parents at home and their elders in the society.
Not Only this program that fulfill the child’s learning needs, other skills is needed like self help personal appearance skills which will teach a child how to feed themselves that is eating, drinking, and other things like dressing, toileting, brushing teeth. All this will make a child to appear smart like other people, to keep his body clean all the time and to eat or drink if he/she feel hungry.
Moreover a child also need “cognitive functioning such as pre-academics example counting, reading, writing with brail machine, numeric functions, counting money, measurements and approximation” (Heward 2006) This skill will help a child to know the basic academic skills for their daily life and this will help them in places like super market, in the kitchen, passing through the road bank and other places.
Not only that but also learners with mild mental retardation and low vision need vocational skills where they can know their work habits and attitudes, how they can search for job, how they can perform work, social vocational behavior and how they can work safely. This will help learners to move from one location to another, to plan things and perform.
Apart from that in this program my learners will benefit the following first they will be able to communicate with their fellow learners, they can communicate with every one in the society.
Then learners as they have mild mental retardation and blindness this program will help them to know the basic things in the society like how to cross the road, how to ask if they need anything, how to receive and give message, The program also educates and trains how learners can respect the elders in the society and how to respect themselves.
To sum up one can conclude by saying that children with mild mental retardation and low vision can be educated in inclusive classes although they need high care and they need to be trained or educated in communication skills how to use brail machine, how to use sign language and the teacher should be competent in all aspects and be able to interact with other professions on how to help a child’s learning.









REFERENCE.

Beine. S. Mary et al {2002}, Mental retardation, R.R. Donnelly& Sons company; New
York

Heward. William. L {2006}, An introduction to special education 8th Ed, courier
Kendallville Inc. New York.

Smith B. M. etal (2002) mental retardation 6th ed. New jersey Columbus, Ohio