Some help for children with disabilities in Split.
Some good news from the Split City Hall, concerning the assistants for children with disabilities in kindergartens. In the 2015/2016 academic year, four kindergartens will employ 25 educators in total. Eight assistants will work at the Radost kindergarten, six at the Cvit Mediterana, seven at the Grigor Vitez kindergarten, and four at Marjan, reports Slobodna Dalmacija on Septmber 11, 2015.
“We will employ the assistants, even though the Law on Preschool Education and the National Educational Standard do not provide for the introduction of assistants for children with disabilities in kindergartens. Since there are still no legal provisions which would define which children are entitled to assistants, as well as their selection process and training and the professional competences necessary for independent work with children, it is not possible to employ any other profession than general educators. The rules on the type and level of qualification of workers in kindergartens specifically define the types of education for professionals and other employees who are allowed to work with children”, explained Ines Milina Ganza, the head of the Department for Education and Science.
For this year, the city’s kindergartens have received 12 requests for assistants for children with mild and severe disabilities. In the end, two children will not go to kindergarten because the professional education service has concluded that it is impossible to integrate them into regular programs. For them, the city authorities have provided the opportunity to enrol in the specialized kindergarten Dva Prijatelja.
“Assistants will continue to work with children who have already been enrolled in previous years, and kindergartens will try to hire new assistants by the end of September for newly enrolled children”, said Ganza.
Despite legal inconsistencies about this category of children, kindergartens try to include children into regular programs, based on the opinion of the expert committee and a team of experts from the kindergarten itself. The experts prepare a special individual program for each child according to their abilities, needs and interests, while abiding by the National Educational Standard, regardless of the type of difficulties the child has.
