Children with disabilities in day care in Denmark

Children with disabilities in day care in Denmark

Kurt Bendix-Olsen, ph.d., assistant professor

Centre for Applied Welfare Research

UCL University College

Outline

• The Nordic model of disability

• Inclusion in Denmark/The Nordic welfare state

• Inclusive practices in day care (age 0 - 6)

The Nordic model of disability

A mismatch between the person's capabilities and the functional demands of the environment

or

A gap between individual functioning and societal/environmental demands

• Disability is a person-environment mismatch (relational mismatch)

• Disability is situational or contextual

• Disability is relative

History of segregation and inclusion in DK

• Citizenship and egalitarianism are important values of the welfare state

• The principle of normalization was formulated in the Nordic

countries. Law (1959). Normalising the living-conditions not people

• The focus shifted from seeing the individual as the “problem” to also include the environment

• Parent organization and disabled people’s movement fought against dehumanizing clinical ideas, i.e. eugenic procedures (1929-1967)

and long-stay institutions

• Independent living movement (de-centralization, integration into

regular daily life)

Rights to inclusion for children with disabilities

• 2007 - Children with disabilities got the right to inclusion in day care (Salamanca Statement was adopted in 1994)

• Dual track organisation of provision in day care :

• General education for most children with disabilities (inclusion)

• Special day care for children with ”significant and lasting impairments that need help or special support”

(protection/training/care)

• Autonomous groups in local day care settings, segregated institutions or parental home care/training (Serviceloven §32)

Service provision in the Nordic welfare state

• Welfare services are universal (education, health, child benefits, disability related benefits and services etc.)

• The gap model: Close an identified gap in welfare with the help of services from specialists/professionals

• The Nordic relational model is difficult to operationalize within

welfare services

Problems and dilemmas

• Client – expert relations develop

• User/consumer positionings vs. the neutral and ”just” authorities (bureaucratic and time costly for all parties)

• Professionals are experts in different disciplines/practices – how to

”apply” (build) knowledges in children’s everyday lives?

• The child- and family-perspectives are often overlooked or seen as secondary, not ”equal” partners

• To hold rights does not automaticly mean access to ressources/funds – local authorities handle ‘cases’ differently

The dichtomy ‘general’ and ‘special’ needs children is problematic

• Inclusion becomes a placement-issue more than a human rights issue (Tøssebro, 2015)

• Children with disabilities can be seen as ‘inclusion-children’ (objects of interventions) or guests under assessment

• Professionals: Monitoring if the child is placed correctly?

• Reproduction of ”normal” – ”special” children as destinct needs-categories

• Less attention to local practice development, conserving the existing system

• General education is understood too narrowly (the ”normal” child = ”able-bodied”

child – children with disabilities become extraordinary or misfits (Garland- Thomson, 1997, 2015)

• Human variation model is needed

Exploring participation from a child- perspective

• Studying the doing of inclusive education in everyday practices

• Looking from the positionings of children with disabilities

• What are the children’s personal engagements and their conditions for taking part

• Access to child-community resources

Time for a change of nappies in day care

Nappy time

• It is after lunch in the day care and one of the social educators (pedagogue) is in the bathroom changing nappies on a group of two and three year old children.

• The social educator calls out for the blind girl: ”Lisa, please come and have a change of nappy”. Lisa is playing in the room next door.

• Anna, a three year old girl, also calls out for Lisa while tapping on the sink.

Anna tries to help Lisa finding her way by guiding Lisa with the sounds.

• Anna knows how to provide acces for Lisa – a practice she has picked up

from other situations where the social educators transformed the space and

made it ”hearable” and thereby more accessible to Lisa.

My point here is that

• Children condition each other’s participation by building up common repertoires for taking part in local practices

• Children learn about inclusion from taking part in the production of everyday practices in day care

• Access to the child-communities becomes vital when exploring

inclusion from a child-perspective

Access to community-building, 3 pedagogical access-points

Shared activity

Common repertoire Mutual

engagement

Experimenting with blindness

Experimenting with blindness

• Lisa, a girl with blindness, is about to start in a new day care group for the 3 to 6 year old’s.

• Lisa visits her new group with staff and children from her current day care group in order to facilitate the upcoming transition.

• Lisa mostly spends her time at the playground outside, and as I enter the indoor facility I hear a social educator (pedagogue) talking with two boys about being blind.

• They are told that being blind is like having ones eyes closed all the time. The boys close their eyes hard and then open them again.

• "It's just all the time," the social educator says. (Bendix-Olsen, 2018)

Experimenting with blindness is doing inclusion – developing ‘safe’ conditions for taking part

How is my body working/

accomodate d materially and socially?

What

engages us when bodily differences are at play?

Who can I be and become

here?

The girl with the big tongue

Amina, a girl with Down’s syndrome and her older borther

attend the same day care centre. Amina is in a crèche group and her brother is in a group for the 3 – 6 year old’s.

The parents bring the brother to his group first and Amina always comes along.

The children in the borther’s group ask the staff: ”Why does this girl have such a big tongue?”

The social educators hear the children's observations, but

they do not follow up on them.

Missing out on co-creating a ‘safe space’

Roestone Collective)

• Amina is becoming visual in vulnerable ways

• No need to erase or disguise differences - but to stop them from setting up certain problems

• Differences need to be acknowledged and embraced in their changing process

• Adults co-create transformative practices by being present

and responsive to children’s conflicts in everyday life contexts

Conclusion

• Conditions for taking part must be developed with, for and around children with disabilities in their everyday life contexts

• Many parties are involved (children, parents, professionals, institutional arrangements , local policies etc.)

• Child-communities are vital change agents in day care

• The notion of ‘general’ and ‘special needs’ is problematic/dilemmatic

• Knowledge from the child perspective may point to new situated ways of producing welfare inside the institutional settings

• The professionals need better conditions for doing this type of work

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References

• Bendix-Olsen, K. (2018a). Små børns perspektiver på inklusion, Ph.d.-skolen for Mennesker og Teknologi, Ph.d.-programmet Hverdagslivets Socialpsykologi, Institut for Mennesker og Teknologi, Roskilde Universitet.

• The Roestone Collective (2014). Safe Space: Towards a Reconceptualization. Antipode, Vol.

46, No. 5, pp. 1346-1365

• Garland-Thomson, R. (1997). Extraordinary bodies. Figuring Physical Disability in American Literature and Culture, New York: Columbia University Press.

• Garland-Thomson, R. (2011). Misfits: A feminist Materialist Disability Concept. Hypatia, vol.

26, no. 3, pp. 591-609

• Tøssebro, J. (2004). Understanding disability: introduction to the special issue of SJDR.

Special issue: Understanding Disability, Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research, 6(1), pp.

3-7

• Tøssebro, J. (2015). Disabled Children and Welfare Policy in the Nordic Countries: Historical Notes, In Traustadóttir et al. (Eds). Childhood and Disability in the Nordic Countries. Being, Becoming, Belonging, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 35-50

• Wenger, E. (1998). Communities of Practice. Learning, Meaning, and Identity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

• Ytterhus, et al. (2015). Perspectives on Childhood and Disability. In R.

Traustadóttir et al. (Eds). Childhood and Disability in the Nordic

Countries. Being, Becoming, Belonging, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 15-33

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