Personal Blogs

My new best friend is FreeMind - the mind-mapping tool I was introduced to early on in this course.

I absolutely love it!  Admittedly, for my first assignment I had over 6,000 words in my notes, so I really need to cut back on the waffle.  But to be fair, most nodes were single words.  The bulk was provided by the ability to copy and paste quotes and URLs, together with references and notes - and then minimise them out of view; so at least everything was together.

THANK you, OU, for introducing us!

It's not easy to find information about funding in Kuwait, as anything that may be on the internet is in Arabic - and ofetn things aren't even there!

I did, however, talk to the Principal of the IDEAL Education School for Special Needs.  It is a private school, but all students are paid for by the government.  Each student receives a grant of between GBP7,200 and KD12,000 per year.  To be entitled to these funds, the child must be assessed by the Kuwiat Ministry.  The child must be Kuwaiti.  If a Kuwaiti child attends a private international school, the school may be entitled to up to GBP 10,000 per year, but this is not guaranteed.  Dyslexia and Asperger's Syndrome, along with other learning disabilities are not considered as a disability when it comes to funding.

This funding continues throughout compulsory schooling age, and into university.  In addition:  "In the educational sector, blind students passing out of Kuwait University are entitled to get 5 percent bonus marks in their overall grade. For blind post graduates, the government pays an allowance of KD 450 [GBP900 per month] until the candidate lands a job." Ghanim AL Oudah.  In addition, Kuwait University provides scribes for the blind.

Arab Times online (acc 25sep10)

Kuwait has issues with its accessibility policy, and the ministry knows it.  Being sure to make allowances for translation, check out the following extracts from The National report Development of Education in the State of Kuwait, 2004-2008, Sate of Kuwait, Ministry of Education:

"As we are still, in spite of being the twenty first century, facing major challenges in the educational integration of people with disabilities, how can we ask for the educational integration [when] Kuwait is still, [using] special education schools established in the fifties and providing educational services for students with disabilities in an isolated school environment.  The establishment of special education schools in that era was due to an [in]ability of students with disabilities to complete their education only through isolating them from their peers to receive regular educational programmes to suit their special needs."

"There are some obstacles that prevent the implementation of integration program in education for students with disabilities, as follows:

• ......
• The opposition of some [parents] of the non-disabled students in regular schools.
• Fear and hesitation to take such a decision for fear of the future negative consequences and critism [by] others.
• The opposition of teachers in regular classrooms and lack of desire to merge and join the disabled in regular classrooms because of the increase of burden of teaching and teachers' efforts exerted for disabled students."

However, the current Minister of Education (H.E. Mrs Nouriya Subeeh Barrak Al Subeeh) is making an effort to change current policy, and established two experiments to integrate students with SEN:

"Partial Integration:  It is the integration of special needs students in special classes with their regular schools provided that the number of students in these classes does not exceed eight students per class.....

Inclusive-Holistic Integration:  It is the integration of special needs students in regular classes of students by merging 5 students with special needs with 15 normal students."

To facilitate this, the govt pays KD5000 (GBP10,000) per year to schools for every Kuwaiti child diagnosed with a disability.  It works very well in the governement SEN schools.  It does not work well in mainstream govt schools, due to the aforesaid parental complaints.

It does not work effectively in the private sector, which is profit driven, and therefore schools choose large class sizes rather than occasional allownces for disabled Kuwaiti students.  Keep in mind, non Kuwaitis with disabilities do NOT receive the allowance; and it would be difficult to implement a policy in an international school allowing access for disabled students only if they're Kuwaiti!!  Plus it brings the perceived level of the school down.  Hence schools who accept these students tend to be specialist SEN schools.

Models of Disability

Social - Defined by person's inability to do things because of conditions imposed by society; ie: the problem is a person is unable to access student housing because there is no access for wheelchairs.

Medical - Defined by person's medical condition causing disability; ie: the problem is the lack of mobility in a person's legs means a person is unable to access housing via entrance provided.

Professional - Defined by the professional's process of identifying an impairment, and making a decision about what is the correct course of action for the 'patient'.  This does not always tally with the 'patient's' wishes, and can therefore depower people with disabilities.

Administrative - Defined by what administrators need to know in order to provide; ie: a person can't walk, an administrator might decide to provide either a wheelchair or wheelchair access to housing, depending on needs.  This is often strongly related to medical model of disability.

Charitable - Defined by chartities' portrayal of people with disabilities.  In the past, this was often as pitiful and helpless; which I suppose is motivated by the desire of charities to tug at donators' heart strings.

Moral - Defined by family's feelings of shame when presenting a disabled person to others in culture, due to a believe that disability is inflicted upon a family as punishment for sins.  Sadly, this does result in people with disablilities being tucked away from the public eye.

Rehabilitation - Defined by what the person needs to make them better; ie: counselling, bedrest, treatment etc. This model was commonly used after WWII.

Rights Based - This is emerging as society is recognising more clearly that ability should not be discriminated against any more than race, religion, creed and gender.  It involves an acceptance of an Equal Opportunities policy, which does not necessarily mean 'equal provisions'; since people with disability may need more costly resources in order for them to be able to access the same opportunities as able colleagues.

Customer - In a consumer society, it is becoming more widely recognised that disabled people are large consumers, and businesses are moving towards providing accessibility to suit their business development models.

Economic - Based upon an individual's ability to contribute to society and support himself.  This ties in with the Social Model, as ability to work is largely dependent upon access provided, and facilities to support disabilities.  This is also linked to the administrative model, as administrators need to weigh up the cost versus benefit of providing such facilities.

However, "Employers may recognize compensations for any loss in employing less-productive disabled employees through kudos, publicity, customer alignment and expansion arising from their presentations as an organization with community values."  Connections for Community Leadership, Models for Disability, (accessed 4th Sept 2010).

"Transhumanist model of disability - does not see the ‘disabled persons body’ as subnormal. It rather sees the human body in general as deficient as something in need of improvement. Therefore it believes in improving any human body if possible whether it’s he one of disabled people or that of the so-called non-disabled. In this model in essence everyone is disabled (mM), everyone has defects in need of fixing. At the societal/political level, the principal response is the support for the development of ANY new technology offering the improvement of the human body and the norm."

International Centre for Bioethics, Culture and Disability

Engel: Life & Soul

The Affirmation Model -  "attempts to extend the social model to include disability culture and community, personal identity as shaped by disability and impairment, and personal acceptance of impairment. To say yes, some barriers exist that we need removed in order to have full civil rights. But also to say no, we don't want to be like the non-disabled people, we are fine with who we are as we are: our impairments are an important part of ourselves and our lives." (Dora Raymaker, Disability Models, Tragedy, and Identity)

Transactional Model makes damning assumptions that health can be bought.  That as consumers, we are dependant on the drug and healthcare providers; and this provision is a business.  Also takes account of value...ie, an amputee may be 100% disabled as a footballer, but not at all disabled as a computer programmer.  Tom Munnecke

Aspiration / Empowerment - not a model per se, but an approach used to empower disabled people, based on development of technology to enable disabled people to do more jobs.  Technology Training & Empowerment: Aspiration & Employability for the Disabled in Latin America

Collaboration Model - Addressing issues (in California) of disabled people who are abused, and looking at  collaboration between services such as living centres, community care, personal carers and transport in order to provide the best intervention.   The Value Of A Collaborative Model

Psycho Emotional Model addresses the issues of how paeople with disabilities react to people in society; such as 'the gaze'.  It addresses the issues that shape how disabled people perceive themselves. 
Counsellors’ attitudes towards young people with disabilities – how may we ensure equality of service delivery?

From Tim's Blog:

Feminist Model: From the perspective of disabled women It considers the position of disabled women in relation to both the women's movement and the disability movement. It argues that the former is oriented towards non-disabled women and the latter towards disabled men, with a consequent further marginalisation and disempowering of disabled women.

The Anti-Social Model: the social model has become a politically rhetorical argument that polemicizes disability, thereby focuses attention on the 'disability' not on the person who might have an impairment - the social model views people from a disability perspective.

The Spectrum Model: The model asserts that disability does not necessarily mean reduced spectrum of operations (the range of visibility, audibility and sensibility under which mankind functions)

The Empowering Model: allows for the person with a disability and his/her family to decide the course of their treatment and what services they wish to benefit from.