I.H.C. centre “a school”

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33261, 26 June 1973, Page 13

I.H.C. centre “a school”

The Avonside pre-school centre for intellectually handicapped children, run bv the Canterbury branch of the Intellectually Handicapped Children’s Society, is no longer able to allow voluntary workers to “work with the children,” says Mr J. E. Anderson, chief administration officer of the branch. “The Avonside centre is not a hospital or a clinic. It

is more than anything else a school. Its job is to educate our children to the maximum possible extent,” says Mr Anderson, in the branch’s latest newsletter. “Because our children have such great communication difficulty, both inward and outward, our supervisors, who should really be called teachers, have a far more difficult, strenuous, and challenging job than accrues to

I teachers in an ordinary. school,” he says. Mr Anderson says that for the first time, the centre has; now achieved a staff ratio of) about one supervisor to three or four children, which is! “the required ratio.” Each child belongs to a very small group, and each group has its own supervisor.

“While this is an entirely good thing, it brings its own small sadness. No longer do we have room for voluntary workers who want to ‘work with the children,’ ” says Mr Anderson. It was almost impossible for a group teacher to integrate a voluntary worker into that which she was doing. Each hour of the day had to be used as competently and productively as possible. The best possible programmes had to be; devised and maintained, without unnecessary diver-i sion or interruption. “We are still, of course, glad of voluntary help in a! rather smaller way at the domestic end of things—but) this is all,” says Mr Ander-| son.

The centre, situated in, CowliShaw Street, has a roll; of 62 children, of whom) about 40 attend on any one day. The children are aged between 2| and 14 and have a staff of nine as well as the) newly appointed senior supervisor, Mrs D. M. May, i

The centre trains the children with the aim of eventually integrating them into the community. Others are trained so that they can later work in a sheltered workshop.

With the recent appointment of Mr M. B. Powell as administration manager, the branch now has an administrative staff of four.