Submissions on the Review of Special Education

The Associate Minister of Education, Hon Heather Roy released the terms of reference for a Review of Special Education on 19 August 2009. The aim of the review is to ensure that policies and processes are fair, consistent, reach those most in need, make the best use of government funding, and that parents have choices.

A discussion document was released in early 2010 for consultation.

The Foundation made two submissions on the discussion document - one was a joint blindness sector response coordinated by BLENNZ, and one was from the Foundation, outlining two specific additional issues: access to information (& the Ministry's leadership role in removing barriers to information access within mainstream education) and deafblind education (detailed issues and solutions that were outside the scope of the joint submission).

Submission from the Blindness Education Sector

Submission from the blindness education sector in response to the Review of Special Education 2010 Discussion Document.

To: Review of Special Education consultation
Ministry of Education
PO Box 1666
Wellington 6140

16 March 2010

The blindness education sector also wishes to register an interest in presenting to the panel as convened by the Associate Minister of Education, preferably in Auckland or Wellington.

Contact details:
Jane Wells
Principal BLENNZ
09 268 3210
027 482 3300
Email: jane.wells@blennz.school.nz

This submission reflects the collective view of the blindness education sector as represented by the following sector organisations and is the official response of the sector:

• Parents of Vision Impaired NZ (PVI)
• Association of Blind Citizens of New Zealand Inc (ABC NZ)
• Deafblind (NZ) Incorporated
• Ngati Kapo o Aotearoa Inc
• Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind (RNZFB)
• Blind and Low Vision Education Network NZ (BLENNZ)
• Association of Teachers of Vision Impaired (ATVI)
• Faculty of Education, University of Auckland (Graduate Diploma in Special Education: Vision Impairment)

This submission was prepared at a full day meeting of the above organisations on 24 February 2010.

• For the purposes of this document the term 'blindness sector' refers to the above organisations.
• For the purposes of this submission 'blind, deafblind and low vision' includes learners who are blind, deafblind, low vision and those with additional complex needs.

The blindness education sector affirms the use of the high level framework of the New Zealand Disability Strategy and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities for this Special Education Review.

Recognising the specific needs of blind, deafblind and low vision children will bring about an inclusive education system that meets their respective needs and is consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The sector would specifically reference Article 8 Awareness Raising, Article 24 Education and Article 25 Habilitation and Rehabilitation. The blindness sector's aspirations for the learners they represent are summed up in the opening statement of Article 24: Education, and in clause 3 (c):

States Parties recognize the right of persons with disabilities to education. With a view to realizing this right without discrimination and on the basis of equal opportunity, States Parties shall ensure an inclusive education system at all levels and life long learning...

3 (c)Ensuring that the education of persons, and in particular children, who are blind, (deaf) or deafblind, is delivered in the most appropriate languages and modes and means of communication for the individual, and in environments which maximize academic and social development.

Responses to Review Questions

Question 1a: What is needed to help schools succeed?

• There needs to be more information provided to teachers and schools to assist a greater understanding of the principles that underpin inclusive education, what these principles look like in action, and schools' responsibilities in providing the appropriate and necessary supports.There is a need for:

• consistent special education training for all teachers in pre-service teacher education.
• opportunities for professional development in special education for teachers in regular education and a requirement that teachers undertake this professional development.
• structured training opportunities for paraprofessionals who are working with learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision.
• a highly trained and competent body of specialist Resource Teachers Vision. The appropriateness of the specialist training for these teachers is critical and the blindness sector warns against any dilution of the specialist content of the existing training programme with a greater proportion of generic special education content.
• the inclusion of relevant content in training programmes to enable specialist teachers of learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision to appropriately meet the needs of Maori families and to work effectively in Maori educational settings.

• Specialist Resource Teachers Vision must be available in appropriate numbers to meet the needs of learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision and to provide quality support to these learners' schools.

Question 1b: How could schools work together to succeed?

• A number of educational options have been presented for consideration in the discussion document. The blindness sector strongly favours the model which is already followed by BLENNZ, and which is not included in the proffered options, in that it includes the Homai Campus School. The BLENNZ model is a cohesive network of services which provide a range of educational placements for learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision, with the choice of fluid movement between the options according to the learner's need.
• The Homai Campus is the hub for an array of services which embrace and support inclusion. BLENNZ provides placement choices, including the Homai Campus School, to meet the needs of individual learners as determined by the IEP team. These placements are viewed as flexible and subject to ongoing review.
• The options include:

• Regional outreach services with learners having educational placements in their local communities, supported by Resource Teachers Vision who are based in regional Visual Resource Centres. This is the norm for the large majority of the learners
• A school for a small number of learners, where the IEP determines it the most appropriate placement. This provision includes a satellite option in a local secondary school, with an intention to further develop other satellite provisionsA national assessment service for comprehensive transdisciplinary assessment, both on the main campus and regionally
• A national immersion programme for enskilling learners nationally in elements of the Expanded Core Curriculum – this includes group courses through to single learner immersion placements in the Homai Campus School
• An Early Childhood Centre at Homai Campus to serve the local learner population and as a national resource for early intervention programmes

• The national base is also the hub for the BLENNZ professional learning community, with staff from throughout the country coming on and off the campus for professional activities such as immersion courses, professional development and group initiatives to achieve the goals of the BLENNZ Annual Plan. It provides a professional heart to the network.
  
  Option C 'Special schools as resource centres' is not seen as appropriate as it does not include a special school as part of a range of services. Homai Campus School is an integral part of the BLENNZ network of services.
  
  A residential facility to support these educational activities:

• The option of Homai Campus School as both a day and residential facility provides for those learners, who for a period of their teaching require intensive teaching and learning in the Expanded Core Curriculum in support of achievement in the regular curriculum, with an ultimate aim of successful schooling in a regular education setting
• It provides a further educational choice for an IEP team where there is no appropriate local educational placement to meet the needs of a learner at that point in time
• It provides a setting for immersion with learners from around the country, and at times their teachers and teacher aides, coming into the classrooms for immersion experiences from a day a week to longer periods
• It plays a key role in the week long national assessments with learners spending time in the Homai Campus School classrooms as a part of the assessment process

• There is a need for strengthening of the funding mechanisms for the BLENNZ model, introducing greater transparency. Immersion Courses are a flagship programme but do not have their own explicit funding stream. The present arrangement of resourcing through Residential funding seems an ad hoc arrangement for such a key BLENNZ programme.
  
  The funding stream for the Homai Early Childhood Centre is likewise somewhat fragile, even after 10 years of discussion with the Ministry of Education. This programme is key to the BLENNZ early intervention services and should have a more robust financial foundation.

Question 2: What needs to be done to make transitions work better?

• Learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision have more intensive support needs at times of transition. The blindness sector favour a much more flexible approach to the use of the learner's ORRS funding package. At present the funding in this package is allocated inflexibly, whereas support needs often vary over time and typically are greater at times of transition.
• One suggestion is a system of 'banking' of the ORRS funding package over time, with the IEP determining the funding needed over the ensuing 6 month period, and if the full funding for the year has not been spent, the capacity to 'bank' any remaining funds to support future needs.
• More funding options are needed for students who are blind, deafblind and low vision in order to support them as they move from secondary school into the world of tertiary study or work.There needs to be far greater clarity and information about support that is available to learners once they leave school. Often parents discover funding options by chance.

Question 3: How could services be better coordinated and focussed on the needs of students and families?

• The blindness sector believe there should be more support from the Ministry of Education for families when they initially engage with schools and principals.
• Parents want choice as to who they have as a lead or key worker.
• There is a need for a more consistent and holistic approach from the agencies who work with families. The sector recommends that core data is exchanged by agencies to avoid the stress for a family of unnecessarily repetitive assessment processes, as each agency seeks the same core data set.

Question 4: What arrangements for funding, decision-making, verification, and fundholding should we have?

As BLENNZ is seen as the most appropriate organisation to manage the ORRS packages, a model is proposed whereby BLENNZ becomes the fundholder for all vision only ORRS verified learners.

In addition, it is proposed that BLENNZ is also delegated the responsibility of applying the verification criteria. A weakness in the current verification criteria for learners with low vision is that it is based on visual acuity, not visual functioning. Using a visual functioning criteria would better determine the educational implications of the vision loss and therefore the support needs. It would also require the expertise in assessing visual functioning that is held in BLENNZ.
Currently the specialist services resource generated by the ORRS positions remains with the fund holder and is not always used to meet the needs of blind and low vision learners. With BLENNZ as the fundholder, there would be the certainty that this resource was being appropriately targeted to the special support needs of this discrete group of learners.
As in the response to Question 2, the blindness sector favour a much more flexible approach to the use of the learner's ORRS funding package. At present it is allocated inflexibly, whereas support needs often vary over time.

Question 5: How can individually targeted services and supports be made more efficient?

It is proposed that learners who are blind and low vision and verified for their vision needs only, have their ORRS packages automatically transferred to BLENNZ as they enter the school system. The ORRS scheme as currently administered fails to ensure blind and low vision students verified as having 'high' or 'very high' needs, as-of-right access to specialist Resource Teacher Vision support.

The blindness sector believe that there is a serious equity issue with regard to the way in which the system of .1 and .2 specialist teacher time allocation is currently operating. Learners who receive this additional teaching resource meet the criteria for high or very high needs verification, and by definition are those that have the greatest need for specialist teacher support from a teacher trained in the education of learners who are blind, deafblind or low vision. This extra teacher resource is however allocated directly to the learner's regular school and it is the decision of that school how it will be used.

It is the blindness sector's contention that under the original Special Education 2000 policy this teaching resource was intended to fund specialist teachers for blind, deafblind and low vision learners i.e. Resource Teachers Vision, and the historic decision to allocate the extra teaching resource to schools was an error. This contention is supported by the fact that Visual Resource Centres were originally established and funded to provide educational support to learners in early childhood and those with moderate needs only. The specialist teacher support to learners with high or very high needs was to come from the ORRS package and this would provide a mechanism for the Resource Teacher Vision workforce to grow, in line with the number and needs of the learners on the BLENNZ caseloads.

With the ORRS specialist teacher resource locked up in regular schools and therefore no way to grow a stable and permanently employed specialist teaching workforce, the Ministry of Education suggested that the way to increase Resource Teacher Vision staffing was to negotiate with schools to transfer these .1 and .2 additional teacher ORRS staffing allocations across to the Visual Resource Centres, who would then use the allocations to employ Resource Teachers Vision. This system had been followed and has created many problems encompassing logistical and equity issues:

• Some schools have been very reluctant to make the transfer for a range of reasons
• The schools usually expect exactly the amount of time transferred every week and this takes away any flexibility in service provision across a Resource Teacher Vision caseload in response to individual need
• There is no provision for travel time with ORRS transfers – it is impossible for one Resource Teacher Vision to undertake 5, .2's
• Every .1 and .2 of teacher time has to be separately negotiated, with an agreement passing from the regular school to BLENNZ and signed off at Board level. BLENNZ currently holds the .1 or .2 teacher allocation for 130 learners who are blind, deafblind or low vision. To administer this constantly changing teacher resource is an enormous task, which requires a huge input of time and resource for all concerned.
• It has created a 2-tiered teaching workforce, some with permanent status and others with temporary. In addition permanent Resource Teachers Vision receive a salary unit, those employed under the ORRS transfer scheme do not.An arbitrary arrangement has been entered into whereby the MOE fund the operations for up to 15 FTE ORRS transfers. BLENNZ now has 14.54 FTE ORRS transfers. Once that figure passes 15 there is no mechanism for receiving operational funding for those additional ORRS transfer positions.

It seems very obvious to all that the main issue is that the .1 and .2 additional teacher allocation generated by the ORRS packages is sitting in the wrong part of the system and that students are being denied access as of right to the blindness education services they need.

A sustainable resourcing framework is needed for Resource Teachers Vision, with positions generated by the numbers and needs of the learners. This would be achieved by the ORRS package being automatically transferred to BLENNZ as the learners enter the school system, along with Resource Teacher Vision travel and operations grants.

Question 6: How can the quality of services be improved?

• Services need to be underpinned by quality teachers, trained in blindness education. The provision for the training of specialist teachers must be sound and provide the appropriate degree of specialisation. As in the response to Question1, the blindness sector warns of the danger of reducing specialist content in postgraduate training courses. In many areas learners who are blind, deafblind or low vision learn differently to normally sighted learners and need support from specialist teachers who are well-grounded in the necessary specialised teaching and learning approaches.
• There is a need for increased collaboration across agencies and providers.

Questions 7 & 8: How can families and schools be better informed? What does successful special education look like and how should we measure it?

• The blindness sector favours the development of a core set of data for learners who are blind, deafblind or low vision which could be shared between agencies as a mechanism for eliminating unnecessary, repetitive assessment processes.
• The blindness sector strongly supports the collation of aggregated data to serve as an evidence base for the educational provision for learners who are blind, deafblind or low vision. For BLENNZ this data collection and aggregation must be carried out on a national basis and it is urged that funding and technical support is provided by the Ministry of Education for this work.
• The blindness sector urges the Ministry of Education to develop systems which would allow it to evaluate the outcomes for learners, both moderate needs and ORRS, of its current provision for learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision. Without sound data any shortfalls in the system can only remain anecdotal and will not be addressed.
• There is a lack of New Zealand research in blindness education and a need for creativity in the use of partnerships with tertiary and other research institutions to promote this activity.
• There is a need to dissipate misleading stereotypes and myths about blindness through informed commentary on the role that adult blind people play as contributing citizens.

Question 9: When things do not go well, what arrangements should be in place to resolve issues?

The blindness sector view accountability as a two-way street. The Ministry of Education has a responsibility also to be accountable for addressing the needs of the low incidence population of learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision.For parents concerned about the services and support available to their child there should be clear formal processes beginning with the school complaints/concerns policy. There should be access to the support of an advocate and easily accessed information about the paths and mechanisms available.

Question 10: What is the most important change that would improve outcomes for children and young people with special education needs?

The blindness sector believe there is no one 'silver bullet' but rather actions across many fronts that will improve learning outcomes for children and young people who are blind, deafblind and low vision.

There are key resourcing changes associated with the ORRS scheme that need to be urgently actioned and that will definitely result in long term improved outcomes for these children and young people.

The blindness sector also sees changing attitudes as key, with a need for the active encouragement of attitudes of tolerance, fairness and equity, and an understanding of the richness of diversity and the right to appropriate education for learners who are blind, deafblind and low vision.

We seek an approach that sees education as a preparation for the whole of life: that sustains and lifts the civilised spirit; that genuinely embraces ethnicity, families, professional and concerned communities; that fosters cross-government and community collaboration and action; that sees special education as an investment in human potential; that grows young people with disabilities as valued contributors, endowed with self-efficacy and who are truly integrated as participants in everyday life.

Submission from RNZFB

Submission on the Review of Special Education

19 March 2010

Introduction

This is the Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind's (the Foundation's) submission on the Review of Special Education. The Foundation contributed to the submission from the blindness education sector, and fully endorses and supports that submission. This submission outlines two additional areas of concern for the Foundation:

accessible information for blind and partially sighted students, including those who are deafblind,specific recognition of, and services for, deafblind students.

The Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind

The Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind (the Foundation) is New Zealand's primary provider of vision-related habilitation and rehabilitation services to blind and partially sighted people. The Foundation's vision is empowering and supporting blind and partially sighted New Zealanders to ensure that they have the same opportunities and choices as everyone else.

The Foundation's membership includes blind and partially sighted people of all ages. The Foundation provides services specific to children and young people and to deafblind people. The Foundation holds contracts with the Ministry of Education for providing orientation and mobility training to children, and for producing and distributing accessible format curriculum materials.

1. Accessible information

This answer responds to Q5b "Is the current mix of programmes, services and supports right and does it provide value for money? What changes would you suggest?", and to Q10 "What is the most important change that would improve outcomes for children and young people with special education needs?"

The growth of e-learning resources and classroom technology is a major opportunity to improve inclusion for blind and partially sighted students, but also brings risks of creating new barriers.

One of the major barriers to inclusion that blind and partially sighted students face is a lack of access to information. Historically, this was because most information was presented in print, which needed to be converted into an accessible format like braille, large print or audio so that a print-disabled student could access it.

Electronic resources can be designed with accessibility in mind[1], so that they can be read either visually on screen or using adaptive technology to present the same information in audio, braille or enlarged text. Following technical standards often makes the resource more usable by students who are not disabled.[2] This universal design approach to information is in line with UNCPRD Article 9 (g & h) and Articles 21 and 24.

However, accessibility is not inevitable, and many digital information resources used in New Zealand schools are not able to be accessed by students who use adaptive technology. The results is that an ever-increasing amount of information needs to be converted into accessible formats, putting pressure on specialist disability support services like the Foundation's Accessible Format Production.

The Ministry can lead the way in removing barriers to information access to blind and partially sighted students by:

• ensuring that all electronic information resources, systems and technologies procured by the Ministry (for example, curriculum materials directly commissioned by the Ministry) are accessible, and that when print materials are commissioned, accessible formats are budgeted for and produced at the same time (braille, large print, audio/DAISY and accessible electronic text).
• requiring that technology and digital information resources procured by schools are designed for accessibility.
• upskilling classroom teachers to ensure that electronic materials produced in class are accessible.
• supporting technical innovation by funding production of accessible digital materials and research into best practice in the use of technology for information access.

The Foundation's Accessible Format Production service underwent a review in 2007.[3] The review's recommendations encouraged the Ministry to take a leadership role in ensuring that classroom use of technology is accessible.

2. Education for deafblind children

The following responses to the discussion document relate to education for deafblind children. The Ministry could improve the special education system for deafblind children by:

• formally recognising deafblindness as a separate category of sensory impairment.
• resourcing specialist assessment and intervention services.
• making specialist deafblindness services available to students.

Deafblindness is a combination of vision and hearing impairments having a significant impact over and above that of either impairment in isolation. Deafblind learners typically require educational and other interventions that take into account this combined effect – simply offering strategies to meet the needs of blind or partially sighted learners and those to meet the needs of d/Deaf and hearing impaired learners is not sufficient to meet needs arising from deafblindness. International guidance[4] consequently suggests that deafblindness should be recognised as a separate category of sensory impairment in its own right. This recognition is embedded in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRDP), which, in its consideration of educational rights, specifically identifies deafblind people as a separate group alongside blind people and deaf people (Article 24:3c).

Key facts

Deafblindness in children is a low incidence disability. No specific research has been carried out into the numbers of deafblind children in New Zealand, but applying recent estimates and research into prevalence rates from overseas to the New Zealand population suggest that we may have between 70[5] and 335[6] deafblind children under the age of 18. (Note: The variation in estimates results from, amongst other factors, the definition of deafblind used, the extent to which children with multiple disabilities are included, and the homogeneity of the national population.)

Deafblind children are an extremely varied group, with widely varying educational needs. The term "deafblind" can cover children who are, for example:

• Blind and using tactile learning strategies such as braille, with moderate or severe hearing impairments, using appropriate amplification, but experiencing significant difficulties in using hearing to fully compensate for the educational and other effects of blindness.
• Deaf-identified, using New Zealand Sign Language to communicate, but losing vision in teenage years as a result of Usher syndrome, and needing to make significant adaptations to ensure their ongoing ability to communicate, read and write, travel, access information and maintain social networks.
• Profoundly deaf, with a cochlear implant, but unable to use vision reliably to support access to language, learning and social development.
• Experiencing multiple sensory, physical and cognitive disabilities, requiring others to make substantial efforts to make the world accessible though visual, auditory and tactile means.
• Born sighted and hearing but experiencing the impact of sudden combined vision and hearing loss from accident or illness, resulting a need for entirely new approaches to communicating and accessing the curriculum.
• Experiencing the combined impacts of other types and degrees of vision and hearing impairments, with or without additional impairments and health conditions, that impact significantly on their communication, learning, mobility, access to information, relationships, and access to the curriculum.

Despite the considerable variation among deafblind learners, some common needs and issues can be identified:

• Assessment and intervention focusing on the child's vision and hearing impairments separately will not identify and meet all the child's needs arising from deafblindness; input from professionals with an in-depth knowledge of deafblindness is important for ensuring that children meet their potential.
• Typically, deafblind children experience significant challenges to accessing communication, information, social and physical environments, and the curriculum, unless substantial adaptation and specialised support is available. This should include support to access the social and recreational aspects of school life, which are often otherwise wholly unavailable to deafblind children.
• Opportunities for incidental learning, and learning by observation, are significantly reduced. This can result in the child not acquiring a body of knowledge and skills commensurate with their age and cognitive abilities, which can further impact on learning and social development.
• Deafblind children may take a significant amount of time to develop trusting relationships with others, and yet these are often the foundation of successful learning and development for deafblind children.

Q 1a: What is need to help schools succeed?

Deafblind children, and their schools, need access to professionals specifically trained to work with deafblind learners, as well as to professionals from the fields of education for blind and for d/Deaf children. These latter groups should receive additional training to enable them to carry out their roles with children who are deafblind.

In addition, deafblind children are likely to benefit from teachers and schools improving their skills in meeting the overall needs of disabled children. However, given the low incidence of deafblindness in children, and the variability in deafblind children's needs, it seems unlikely that broad-based training for general education teachers in working with deafblind students would repay the investment.

Instead, resources need to be made available for specific training for individual teachers, school staff and other professionals working with a deafblind child. Such training should be provided by specialists in working with deafblind children, who can tailor it to the individual needs of the child and school.

Similarly, para-professionals working with a deafblind child need very specific training to enable them to work effectively with that child. As teacher aides are often a deafblind child's main channel of access to the curriculum and the social and physical environment, they should receive more in-depth and ongoing training than is commonly the case at present. Where a deafblind child relies on a communication method that is unique in their school environment (e.g., sign language in an otherwise non-signing setting) or that must be made individually available (e.g., close up signing for a child who cannot reliably see the class teacher's signs), then teacher aides working with child should be expected to have a high enough level of skill in that method to provide successful communication and good language models. This is essential to ensure that education services meet their obligations to ensure that education for deafblind children "is delivered in the most appropriate languages and modes and means of communication for the individual" (UNCRDP, 24:3c).

Q 1b: How could schools work together to succeed?

There are currently no special schools or units specifically for deafblind children in New Zealand. Deafblind children are being educated in a range of settings, including settings for blind and partially sighted children, settings for d/Deaf and hearing impaired children, settings for children with other disabilities, mainstream schools and home-schooling. The low incidence and variability of needs of deafblind children would be expected to pose very significant challenges to the development of deafblind-specific schools and units.

Whatever overall model of special education is developed, it must allow for the development and dissemination of expertise in deafblind education across all settings in which deafblind children are educated. It must also allow for the fact that some deafblind children will need access to teaching and social interaction through less common communication methods, including sign language. Again, this is essential for ensuring that obligations under Article 24:3 of UNCRDP are met.

Q 2: What needs to be done to make transitions work better?

Transition planning for deafblind students should typically involve input from deafblindness specialists in order to ensure that options and supports take into account needs arising specifically from deafblindness. Transition planning for deafblind children is often complex, as highly specialised supports may be required, and considerable knowledge must be transferred to new providers; it is therefore critical that transitions are begun in plenty of time and that they are properly resourced.

Q 3: How could services be better coordinated and focused on the needs of students and families?

Deafblind children and their families/whānau are particularly likely to receive input from multiple servicers and agencies, many of whom may not be familiar with the implications of deafblindness. While we make no specific recommendations for a model for coordinating service provision, we note that whatever systems are adopted need to ensure that deafblind children and their families/whānau are given early access to specialist service provision.

Q 4: What arrangements for funding, decision-making, verification, and fundholding should we have?

Deafblindness is a low incidence disability, and many deafblind children have high or very high needs. It is essential that any funding system adopted does not disadvantage deafblind children by making individual deafblind children appear to be a drain on limited local resources. It is also essential that schools wishing to enrol a deafblind student should not have to deplete limited resources to ensure adequate support for that student.

This tends to suggest that funding for deafblind children should be more centralised. The option of releasing central monies for parents/caregivers to administer may suit some; deafblind children often have highly individualised needs, and it may be that some families/whānau would benefit from deciding how best to use the funds for their child. However, parenting a deafblind child can be immensely time- and resource-consuming, and families/whānau who do not wish to administer their child's funds should not be disadvantaged.

The current ORRS criteria are inadequate for ensuring straightforward access to appropriate funding for deafblind children. In contradiction of international best practice, they do not recognise deafblindness as a separate category of sensory impairment. Deafblind children's educational needs do not arise from the separate effects of their hearing and vision impairments; the impact of significant impairments of the two major distance senses is typically very much greater than the impact of each impairment in isolation. The inclusion of deafblindness as an impairment category would enable and encourage a consideration of deafblind children's needs specifically as deafblind learners.

Q 5a: How can individually targeted services and supports be made more efficient?

Any system for organising resources needs to take into account both the likelihood of there being only very small numbers of deafblind children in any one local area, and the need for ensuring that highly specialised support is available to all deafblind children in New Zealand. While we would support more efficient uses of resources, we would be concerned by any proposals for clustering support that risked subsuming the specific needs of deafblind children in to a system that focused on more common special educational needs. Similarly, while deafblind children must be able to access educational services for blind and d/Deaf children, this must not be at the expense of making resources available for specialist deafblind educational services.

For many deafblind children, learning occurs best when the child has a chance to develop a trusting relationship with a very small number of people working consistently and predictably with them. Any pooling of resources, particularly teacher aide resources, should take into account this need of deafblind children for consistency.

Q 5b: Is the current mix of programmes, services and supports right and does it provide value for money? What changes could you suggest?

Current programmes, services and supports are inadequate to meet the needs of deafblind children. In contrast to the situation in many comparable countries, in New Zealand the Ministry of Education neither provides nor funds any deafblindness-specific educational or support services. While deafblind children benefit from MoE-funded, and in some cases MoE-supplied, services for d/Deaf and hearing impaired children, and blind and partially sighted children, these services alone are typically insufficient to meet a deafblind child's needs.

Assessment from a deafblindness perspective is essential for helping to determine the most appropriate communication methods for each deafblind child, and for identifying educational environments that will maximise academic and social development, both of which New Zealand commits providing for deafblind children (UNCRDP, 24:3c). Without highly specialised advice, information, intervention and support, many deafblind children will be unable to meet their potential or to enjoy "full and equal participation in education and as members of the community" (UNCRDP, 24:3) in the New Zealand educational system.

In determining how best to provide such specialist services, the low incidence of deafblindness, and likely need to provide services to some children in remote areas, must be acknowledged.

In order to receive specialist services, deafblind children must of course be identified as being deafblind. Identification of deafblindness in very young children is outside of the scope of this review, but we would recommend that Education services collaborate with Health services to ensure that school-aged children who may be at risk of deafblindness are adequately and regularly assessed. This is important for ensuring that deafblind children are given access to specialist services as early as possible, in line with Section 26:1a of UNCRDP. In particular, though by no means exclusively, this implies suitable vision assessments for congenitally d/Deaf children to detect Usher syndrome (a genetic condition typically causing severe to profound congenital deafness and vision loss from the eye condition retinitis pigmentosa, beginning before adulthood).[7]

Q 6: How can the quality of services be improved?

The quality of services to deafblind children would be significantly improved by consistent access to deafblindness specialists, able to carry out deafblindness-specific assessments and to provide in-depth advice and support to children, families/whānau and schools.

In some areas it may be possible to bring together small groups of deafblind children to be educated in one place. However, the number of children needing similar educational approaches and access to the curriculum via the same linguistic mode, wishing to receive their education in a particular geographical location, is always likely to remain small.

Q 7: How can families and schools be better informed?

Families/whānau of deafblind children usually have little or no prior experience of deafblindness. Educational service providers may also have limited knowledge of good practice in the education of deafblind chidden. Developing New Zealand-specific educational standards and guidelines, similar to those available in the UK[8] and USA[9], would help to make education services more accountable to deafblind children and their families/whānau.

Provision of information and advice specialist deafblindness services should also better enable children and their families/whānau to determine whether their other educational services are adequately meeting their needs.

Q 8: What does successful special education look like and how should we measure it?

Successful special education for deafblind children is likely to look very different for different deafblind children. However, a common theme would be the development of skills appropriate to each child as a deafblind child, in order to access communication, the physical and social environment, the curriculum, and leisure and social opportunities. The educational standards and guidelines referred to above set out further detail on appropriate education for deafblind children.

Q 9: When things do not go well, what arrangements should be in place to resolve issues?

The entire process for resolving issues must be made accessible to deafblind students and their families/whānau. This includes providing information in a range of accessible formats on what standard of service they can expect and how to raise concerns and follow a complaints process if necessary. Communication support should be made available as needed for children who wish to raise and resolve concerns on their own behalf, and advocacy should be available in appropriate communication modes for those who need it.

Q 10: What is the most important change that would improve outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs?

Formalisation of the recognition of deafblindness inherent in New Zealand's ratification of UNCRDP, such that:

Deafblindness is acknowledged as a separate category of sensory impairment in its own right.Deafblind children have a right to assessment and intervention that takes their specific needs as deafblind children into account.Funding arrangements for deafblind children take into account the impact of deafblindness over and above that of each sensory impairment in isolation.Specialist deafblindness services are made available in order to ensure deafblind children's access to, involvement in, and contribution to education family/whānau life, and their school and wider communities.

Further Information

Please direct any questions to:
Moira Clunie
Insights, Policy & Advocacy Manager
Phone: (09) 355 6938
Email: mclunie@rnzfb.org.nz

Royal New Zealand Foundation of the Blind
Private Bag 99941
Newmarket
Auckland
NEW ZEALAND