Work At School For Mentally Retarded

Press, Volume C, Issue 29588, 10 August 1961, Page 2

Work At School For Mentally Retarded

Outstanding work for mentaily«retarded children is being carried out at a new Dandenong training school by a young Australian girl, Miss Shirley Campigli, who has been touring New Zealand on a prize trip awarded by the Young Fanners’ Movement of Victoria and sponsored by the ’Australia and New Zealand Bank, Ltd.

At the age of 22, Miss Campigli is the youngest supervisor of such a school in Australia. She has more than 20 children in her care and one assistant.

The of a dairy fanner, from Toomuc Valley, Pakenham. Miss Campigli was trained as an art and craft teacher under a Red Croat Society bursary. Her practical work for this course took her into schools for handicapped children and to psychiatric hoapitals and gave her intensive traininc at Oakleigh—the largest day school for mentally retarded pupils in the Southern Hemisphere. “Oakleigh is 23 miles east of Melbourne and I was offered a port there teaching children of a certain age group.” Miss Campigli said in Christchurch yesterday. ‘‘But I wasn’t satisfied wi’h that. I wanted to teach in sheltered workshops as well and also to teach younger children. “I was sent to Dandenong In March, 1960, to open a new training school. It had nine pupils and was housed in temporary quarters." School Bns

Run by a committee of parents and people interested in the welfare of the children, the Dandenong Centre for Mentally Retarded Children soon grew’ to more than 12 pupils and qualified for a school bus. A small bus was bought and Miss Campigli hastily learnt to drive it and qualified for her “D.C. licence” which enabled her to drive a passenger vehicle. Now she collects two of the children in it each morning and then sends another adult to pick up local pupils when she arrives at the school. The bus, like the school itself, is subsidised heavily by the Government, she said.

In school the children’s routine is of great importance. When they arrive they listen to the radio programme. "Kindergarten of the Air,” which gives them time to settle down after their arrival. Then they keep to a programme of work, music and games, run on the same - lines as at "Oakleigh.” “We have a lot of games to music as the children re-

spond so well to this,” said Miss Campigli. "We also sing and have a percussion band. The children bring their own records to play on the table radiogram at the school and they also listen to another radio we have.” The committee and the supervisor have big plans for the school at Dandenong. The new buildings will accommodate 40 day pupils and will be of the same bright, airy design at Oakleigh. • Social Adjustment At present Miss Campigli teaches children between the ages of four and 16 and two much older than that. At Oakleigh the four-year-olds attended a class organised on the lines of a kindergarten, she said. This was to help them to adjust socially before they began working in the main classes at the age of five. From five to 12 they were divided into different groups and the teachers aimed to get the most from their pupils to, number work and word recognition. "If they progressed very well in this they eould leave and go to a special school for slow learners or

even an ordinary State school,” Miss Campigli said. Those children who stayed on at Oakleigh spent the next two or three years doing such craft work as weaving and basketry and the number work and word recognition that they had already learnt was again brought into this. At the age of 15 years some children were given a year’s preparatory work with a sheltered workshop in view. There was a workshop attached to the school where they did work similar to-that found in light industry and carried out during the eight hours of a normal working day with three weeks’ holiday at Christmas replacing the term vacations of the training school “No Pressure” “The only real difference tn this was that there was no time pressure on the pupils as there would be in a factory,” said Miss Campigli. “They were paid for the work they did.” Pupils could stay at the workshop indefinitely as there was no restriction on age. Future plans for Oakleigh included a glasshouse where pupils could learn and practise elementary horticulture, and as well a hostel where pupils could stay, if a member of their immediate family was ill. From the hostel they will be able to continue with their lessons at the training school without a break in their daily routine. Away from her school Miss Campigli helps with haymaking and other seasonal jobs on her father’s farm. She is also a keen horsewoman and rides in show and hunting events at the Royal Melbourne Show each year. She trained her own horse, South Wind, herself, as she has trained all the horses she had for herself. If she is back in Melbourne in time today, Miss Campigli hopes to ride with the Melbourne Hunt. She has been disappointed in the weather in, New Zealand which hag prevented her from riding with a hunt. “Bpt I did go out for a ride in a blizzard in Southland,” she said. “I was determined to get on a horse somewhere in this country.”