Project overview: The impact of Inclusion

My final project will focus on Inclusion. This subject is important to me because of the

cultural background of the families we serve. In fact, 90 % of our families, if not more,

come from refugee families from East Africa, mainly Somalia. Coming from a culture

where people are far from being accustomed with the notion of Special needs or

challenging behavior, or children impacted with both, our families are dealing with

children with disabilities and most of the time are either in denial because they dont

understand the concept, or they just dont know that something can be done in a child

care program or the education system. In developing countries, among marginalized

groups, children with disabilities remain the most excluded, discriminated not only

because of their disability but also because of a lack of understanding and knowledge

about its causes, implications and stigma. World report on disability (World Health

Organization). Therefore, I would like to help parents in my program understand the

concept of Special Needs and challenging behavior by breaking a cycle and prove the

stereotype wrong. I am mostly motivated to use inclusion in our program because of two

children in our program that staff identified and having some delays or disabilities: One

of them is almost 2 and he has a visual impairment, the second one is 9 and he has a

speech impairment. After identifying the problems we figured out that we were not

specialized to provide any help but we could get some assistance by contacting an

agency for a referral. One of the support that I successfully reached for is called SNSP

which stands for Special Need Support Program. SNSP helps the families that need

support and they train the staff in the program provided the family shows involvement

and is willing to partner with the agency. The staff will get credit for continuing Education
with the Registry. They will learn prevention strategies to address behavior. One of the

impactful option will be enrolling in the Early Childhood Inclusion Certificate that will help

the teachers build the skills, knowledge, resources and attitudes to successfully work

with ALL children in the program.

This should be a solution for children with disabilities and children with challenging

behavior and in some extent children who are dealing with both realities. The eligibility

criteria are: families need to receive the Wisconsin Share or childcare subsidy

assistance through W-2. SNPS might require the child has an IEP (Individualized

Education Plan), IFSP (Individualized Family Service Plan) or 504 Plan. If the child does

not benefit from these individualized plans, the parent can still get assistance if they

receive a diagnosis for their child from a doctor or a licensed professional. However,

since I cannot entirely count on parent involvement to get assistance for my staff, I did

some research, went to a conference organized and sponsored in part by the

Milwaukee County (Services for Milwaukee Children and Youth with disabilities and their

families) and I was able to understand the importance of a referral but mostly the

different resources and workshops that can help my staff. The referral a childcare

provider can place and more importantly the resources needed in the classroom to offer

some assistance to the teachers.