Week One (9 April - 11 April 2013)
Tuesday (9 April 2013)
Armed with
what knowledge we had gleaned from our last block (Severe Developmental
Communication Disorders), the student Speech Therapy students descended on the
bus stop, having no clue what to expect. I had all heard our peers talk about
the CBR block and I'd read as much as I could about the community, but actually
going into the setting is rather daunting. This block brings a range of firsts
which I was excited about. It was the first time I had ever got to work with
the OTs, the first time working in a low-income community and the first time
I've had freedom to get involved and help set up projects that I'm passionate
about.
Just travelling
through Marian Ridge, you can see that the community would benefit from
whatever services we can provide. I had read that there was a lot of
unemployment in the area, but I don't think I expected to see as many people
walking around the community as I did. Arriving at Ridge Cafe, we were able to
go through the handover file with the OTs and find out what had been done and
what their plans were. We were later joined by Dr Flack who gave us a quick
introduction and set out the basic plan for the week. Something I think the
speechies all appreciated was that she explained how important the speechies
contact hours were to the OTs, especially as the speechies didn't know that
speechie and OT hours were calculated differently. I noticed throughout the
week that this changed the OTs' attitude toward us and they have tried to help
us by including us in the screening they were doing at the clinic.
After Dr
Flack left, the speechies went to introduce themselves to the principle, HOD
and teacher of the grade Rs at Marian Ridge Primary School. The HOD, Mrs Zulu,
seemed extremely interested in what our profession involved and we explained to
her how speech therapy can help those children who have learning difficulties.
We also explained the importance of early intervention for these children. We
joined the OTs up at the clinic, which was packed with parents and little
children. We introduced ourselves briefly to the staff and they gave us
permission to use one of the empty rooms in the clinic to screen some of the
children who were in the waiting room. As the room was far too small to
accommodate all of us, we split into two with two OTs and Stella screening in
the room and the rest of us screening outside on the corridor. Within a matter
of minutes we had a few children join us, interested to see what we were doing.
I managed to screen two children, a three year old and a seven year old. I
think by screening the children while their parents were waiting in the queue
for the clinic, we provided the children with something to do and therefore we
held their attention much easier than what we would have done if they had been
waiting in a queue to see us. The only disadvantage was that we were outside in
a corridor where people walked passed frequently. Perhaps, next time we could
find a better place to work.
On the
way back to Ridge Cafe, we met up with one of the women who were at the clinic.
She was extremely interesting to talk to as she had recently moved back into
the area after living in Gauteng for a few years. She explained how the area
had changed and it was great to get a resident's perspective of what the
community needs and where the problems lie. Many of the problems she raised
included drug abuse, unemployment, teen pregnancy and domestic violence.
Wednesday (10 April 2013)
After
planning for the group therapy session with the grade Rs at Marian Ridge
Primary the previous day, we were all much more prepared for what we were going
to face. Unfortunately, the weather was our biggest enemy. We had planned to
use as much movement as possible in the activities, but it was freezing cold
and raining, and so we scaled our activities down to make them more
"classroom friendly".
We had
planned and integrated our activities with the OTs so that in each activity the
children were learning and using more than one skill. First, the OTs played
"Simon Says" with the children, starting off at a basic instruction
level with visual cues and then gradually minimizing the cues and increasing
the complexity of the activity. It was clear that some of the children
struggled further along in the activity, especially when there were no visual
cues and there were two or more parts to the instruction. The activity may have
worked better if there was more space and if the children were split into
smaller groups (as was originally planned), however due to the weather this was
impossible. From there, the OTs started the tabletop activity where the
children were required to make pictures of themselves, cutting out a paper
template and sticking it onto another piece of paper. Once again, space was an
issue as the clinicians tried to fit between the children to help where needed.
Once that was done, the speechies took over and got the clients to glue and
stick parts of the face onto their paper template. These included eyes, a nose,
a mouth and ears. The children were asked to point to where their eyes/nose/mouth/ears
were and say what each part did, including verbs into the activity. As each
speechie sat between two tables and helped and asked the children from both
tables questions, each child got a chance to answer questions. I sat at the
back of the class with the quieter children and noticed that they were more
reluctant to answer questions than those at the front of the class. I was quite
impressed with the resources available to the children in the class.
As it was
pouring with rain and there was no electricity, the library, where the stroke
group meet, was closed. Therefore, the stroke group had to be cancelled. The
OTs called their supervisor and it was decided that they would go back to
campus and that we would join them after we screened some of the children as I
had taken my car to Marian Ridge. After break, the speechies went to screen a
few of the grade 1s and speak to Mrs Zulu (HOD) and a few of the teachers about
the Library Literacy Program which we were planning to set up. We had heard
from the previous group of speechies that the program had once been running at
the library, but the teachers were not happy with it as the materials used were
not what were being used at the school. Therefore we wanted to try and get as
much input as possible from the teachers as well as make them feel as if they
are also involved in the project and not feel that we are trying to take over.
Mrs Zulu and Mrs Van Wyk (a teacher) seemed enthusiastic about the project and
shared some concerns about some of the children at the school. They mentioned
that many of the students cannot speak English and that they are unsure what to
do with them. We got the impression that they did not know how to educate these
multilingual children and that they were seeing their inability to speak
English competently as being a disorder. We managed to screen six children in
the staff room which was a great venue in terms of it being warm and
quiet.
After we
were finished, we made our way out of the community (with the help of my GPS which
we would have never have managed to do without) and went back to campus for a
tut with the OT supervisor, Cgantelle.
Thursday (11 April 2013)
After an
interesting bus-ride, during which the bus driver got lost and started to take
us towards Kwa-Ndengezi, the speechies and audios (and one OT) were situated at
Rainbow Crèche for the morning. It was an amazing venue to work in purely
because of the space available to us. We had planned the previous day what we
were going to do and had prepared to split up, aiming at expanding vocabulary
(animals, colours, shapes and common items), following directions,
facilitating the use of prepositions (in and out, up and down) and
understanding time concepts (before and after - fast and slow). The activities
used included "Simon Says", standing inside and outside hoola hoops,
book reading, singing songs, going up and down the rungs of the jungle gym,
looking at pictures and explaining the vocabulary in it as well as finding the
real item in the environment. It was good to work with the audios as they had
experience in the venue and with the children.
There
were a few problems which we encountered during the morning. Firstly, we had
chosen a book which we thought the children could handle, using the grade Rs
from the previous day as a measure. It quickly became apparent that these
children were on an entirely different level to those at Marian Ridge Primary,
and therefore we had to downgrade the book we were using. Another difficulty
was that many of the children could not speak English and there is no Zulu
speaker in our entire group, thus when the children wanted to speak to us in
Zulu we couldn't understand them and no teacher was available to translate.
This has been a problem since the previous block as there is no speechie within
the entire block who can speak Zulu fluently. While we try to speak Zulu to the
best of our ability, the Zulu narratives, which the children were trying to
express today, were impossible for us to understand and at one stage I had to
ask one of the English-speaking children to tell me what one of her friends had
said. While I understand that we need to develop our Zulu skills, perhaps in
future the Zulu speakers could be shared out equally between the blocks.
Another thing that could have been improved, and which has been raised in the
afternoon tut, was that we should have made those who were more capable do more
advanced things in the activities. I noticed that the children did not know the
alphabet and were generally under stimulated in terms of developing early
literacy skills. This will have to be worked on during the therapy
sessions.
On the
way back up to the bus we encountered a few guys smoking weed. It struck me as
being strange that they were so free and open with their drug use, showing how
different their attitudes are about those issues.
Overall,
the week has been an eye opening experience where we've all been trying to find
our feet in the community. I'm looking forward to seeing what progress can be
made and if that progress will be as sustainable as what we aim for it to be.
- Kirsty Wheeler
- Kirsty Wheeler
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