Therapeutic Priority for Developing Communication in Children with Special Educational Needs: Speech Therapy Intervention
Abstract
The verbal behaviour of persons with special educational needs features delayed speech evolution compared to normally developed persons. In the speech therapy process for children with SEN, it is necessary to delimit strictly the objectives proposed, the responsibilities for each factor involved, and the corresponding priorities. The paper focuses on the importance and necessity of speech therapy activities, conducted for students with special educational needs. Speech therapy activities are based on a systematic process of learning or re-learning correct language structures, of gradually consolidating these structures in current speech. There is no typical model in the education of disabled children, because any proposition is first defined by a team, in an attempt to understand the child’s needs, the family’s availability, and the assistance service functioning. In conclusion, disability can always be compensated by the child’s capacities within his psychophysical potential.
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Introduction
Speech is the individual activity of communication through language, while communication (transmitting information) involves conveying significations between an emitter and a receptor, which is possible through codes that allow the materialization of messages. Human communication is considered the fundamental method of psychosocial interaction through symbols and social generalized significations of reality; it expresses the essence of human connections, the meaning of social contacts. The verbal behaviour of persons with special educational needs features delayed speech evolution compared to normally developed persons. This delay is due to the specifics of mental processes, which make linguistic acquisitions and the development of relations with the social setting more difficult. Therefore, in disabled persons communication is perturbed by the presence of speech disorders that require speech therapy (Roffey, S., Parry, J., 2001).
Their personality features a simplified, unorganized verbal conduct, while information exchange is incomplete from the perspective of both reception and production.
Conclusion
The child with special educational needs requires particular care, specific support and various types of stimulation. Within the therapy, they must cover diverse and multiple recovery possibilities, ensured by the participation of various specialists: physicians, social workers, speech therapists, kinesiotherapists, psychologists, etc.
Therapists must provide high quality correcting methods and procedures, thus providing differentiated education for these children, in agreement with the individual needs of each child.
Furthermore, one must encourage the collaboration between all specialists involved within the educational and therapeutic process; the goal must always involve informing, counselling, and involving the family within the therapeutic process.
It must be highlighted that integration does not mean for every child with SEN to find a place in regular schools, but it rather means that we should find the best suitable school for valorising his/her capacities.
People with special needs have always existed, reason for which it must be considered that this involves a certain life standard, which means that it is necessary to prepare the society through proper education and legislation. The goal is to accept the others the way they are and to contribute to the integration of persons with SEN in the professional and social context of each community. Only under such circumstances will the disability be compensated by other capacities of the persons in question, capacities included in his/her psychophysical potential.