There is a dichotomy facing people with learning difficulties in terms of expectations. On one hand, you have the optimistic believers, often family members, who expect a miracle and believe the person will somehow be cured, sometimes without even putting effort in. On the other hand, you have those who believe the child with Autism or SPLD (Specific learning difficulties) are doomed and will never achieve anything. In reality, most children will exist somewhere in the middle, so it is important to examine what the person enjoys and possibly excels at and encourage these activities, whilst not neglecting other essential skills. This is no different to how people view their nondisabled child, it just might be a little more difficult, yet can be extremely rewarding.
Currently there are little to no mechanisms to enable these children into jobs or educational practices, such as utilising the things child with learning difficulties enjoys. For example, my brother Jacob loves his Nintendo, IPAD and mobile phone, he is often found listening to music and loves transport such as trains, cars or planes. These sort of activities are often attractive to people with learning difficulties such as Autism and can give them great benefit [1]. Could not these enjoyments be identified and used to give them an outlet and earn money? In my brother’s case there could gadget testing jobs or assessing transport from a customer standpoint. In a world where very little is designed for special needs people their opinions are even more valuable. Even though someone can’t talk they have ways of communicating through actions such a body language, after all who better to give advice to make transport more disability friendly, then those who require those services.
A lot of special need children develop mental health issues [2] in part as they have nothing to do when they finish school. They need to learn to be independent which technically is what the government promotes but in reality doesn’t do much about. As a sister to someone with severe Autism and ADHD I really want him to live a fulfilling life and have the opportunities that any other child would have, even if it comes in a different form.
Schools and the government need to step up to the plate. I believe any subject whether English, math, science or French can be better tailored and be made applicable to anyone, it’s just needs to be put in the right format that anyone with severe difficulties can understand. This would be a good start to delivering an equal society for those with learning difficulties (or any disability for that matter).
To cap it off, often when looking for employees, firms do not want to take on someone with severe learning disabilities as it is seen to be a lot of effort and costly, despite the 2010 disability equality act [3] being passed, as well as schemes such as Access to Work [4]. This is similar to the education dilemma where effort is not put in and stigma prevails. In reality, if people with learning difficulties are given the right support within the job they have, they bring qualities such as new perspectives, better understanding of certain situations, new ideas, determination, passion and good moral for the team [5]. It has even been shown that a more diverse work force increases productivity [6].
1 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1362361310365028
2 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10882-011-9231-7
3 https://academic.oup.com/ilj/article-abstract/40/4/359/663640
Jacob's Time 