Inclusive Pedagogical Practice for Children with Additional Healthcare Needs

This assignment highlights inclusive pedagogical practice set-up with 30 different children under the age group of 0 to 5 years with additional healthcare needs. It discusses funding, national quality standards, organisational and professional support, and pedagogical practices and skills required by an educator in order to successfully adapt under this diverse set-up.

Running head: NURSING
Nursing
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

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Introduction
The basic human right towards the foundation of equal society is inclusion in the
domain of education (Cook, Klein & Chen, 2015). According to the reports published by
Richter et al. (2017), inclusive education can be defined as a concept where the children with
special needs are given education in mainstream schools. The United Nation Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) first introduced this approach in the year
1996. UNESCO highlighted that inclusive schools are effective in addressing indifferent
attitudes nurtured by the healthy children and individuals towards the children with additional
needs (Australian Research Alliance for Child and Youth [ARACY], 2012). This inclusive
practice helps to promote equitable education to all irrespective of mental or physical
disability which is the main concept of this assignment. The following assignment will
highlight inclusive pedagogical practice set-up with 30 different children under the age group
of 0 to 5 years. All these 30 children are with additional healthcare needs like challenging
behaviour, communication difficulties, Autism, Down’s syndrome, and Cerebral Palsy.
Among these children 3 are from culturally and linguistically diverse communities and
another 3 are suffering from chronic health issues. The assignment will initiate with funding
and national quality standards in Australia for inclusive pedagogical practice. After
discussing the issue, the assignment will highlight the organisational and professional support
helpful in setting up diverse set-up and special skills required by an educator in order to
successfully adapt under this diverse set-up. The succinct discussion of all these points will
help to analyse the importance of inclusion and how this inclusive practice can be applied on
diverse settings.

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Part 1
Current Funding
According to the New South Wales (NSW) Department of Education (2018), the
disability and inclusive program helps to generate support finding and to help children with
special needs in community to take part in early childhood education program like any other
health children. The overview of the inclusive program is provided below
Program
components
Brief Description Key dates
Introduction of
strong equity
funding
$6,600 per year funding for children with
special needs and disability and are
registered under community pre-school for
600 hours per hour
Collection of data on
28th of February to 27th
of March 2018 and
payment on April
2018
Additional fund
raising for
children who
demands high
need support in
order to cope with
their disability
This mainly includes emergency funding for
the children with special needs and demands
high end support in order to indulge into
educational practice.
Application is
accessed in order to
align with the overall
payment schedule
during the tenure of
April 2018
Minor capital
funding
This funding helps to support specialised
organisational requirement like resources and
tools in order to support children with special
needs
This concept is in
developmental stage
and will be applied on
2019

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Table: Overview of the funding program in NSW government
(Source: NSW Department of Education, 2018)
The principal funding is used to recruit teachers and educational officers for
implementing personalised learning and support for the children with disability or special
needs in their class rooms. The funding is also given in order to provide assistance to the
classroom teachers. This assistance will be given through the application of professional
learning and to liaise with the parents, family of carers and other employees of the schools.
Integration funding support of NW is provided to deliver additional support to the students
with moderate to high level of support requirement. This additional support is helpful to easy
adaptation of the children with special needs or physical disability under NSW public school
set-up (NSW Department of Education, 2018).
The government of Australia also has National Disability Insurance Scheme for the
children with special needs. A child is a participant under NDIS scheme of section 28 of the
NDIS Act published on 2013. However, as per the provision, the documentation of the
evidence, highlighting child's disability is not required. NDIS mainly covers the medication
and health-related expenses. Inclusion Support Programme (ISP) also list under the current
funding for early childhood care for the children with special needs and any form of physical
disability. ISP mainly promotes tailored interventions (Australian Government Department of
Education and Training, 2017).
National Quality Standards for Inclusive Education
There are 7 distinct standards under Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality
Authority (2017). The 1st domain is educational program and practice and it is directed

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towards maximizing children learning and development. The 2nd domain is children health
and safety and thus provides emphasis on quality education along with improvement of
health. The 3rd factor is physical environment and mainly promotes safe surrounding where
children feel safe and secured. The 4th factor is proper staffing and arranges in order to give
children individualised care. 5th factor is effective relationship with children in order to
increase the sense of attachment. The 6th domain highlights collaborative partnership with
parents to increase quality outcome. The 7th factor highlights proper leadership and
governance. Observance of these 7 standards helps in comprehensive re-structuring of the
inclusive practice under childhood education.
The element of 1.1.2 of standard 1.1 aligns with the requirement of the children with
additional healthcare needs or with disability. The standard 1.1.2 promotes children-centred
approach for designing the learning program. This children-centred approach is based on
ideals, cultural competencies, specific interest of the children and their individualised
strengths. The element 3.2.1 of quality standard 3 promotes inclusive environment to engage
children in diverse activities. The element 5.1.2 promotes respecting rights and the dignity of
the children along with giving preference to their cultural needs irrespective of their
disability. The quality area 4 and 6 also upholds improvement of overall quality of
educational needs of children with disability and additional needs (Australian Children’s
Education and Care Quality Authority, 2017).
Part 2
Professional and organisational support
The professional and organisational support for culturally and linguistically diverse
children (CALD) between the age group of 3 to 5 years is speech-language pathologist
(SLPs). SLPs will help the children to work on their communication, language, vocabulary

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and dialects and thus helping them to adopt with the Australian originals (Crawford &
Candlin, 2013). However, SLPs requirement will differ among children coming from
different cultural background, Arabic, Mandarin and Turkish. It is the duty of an educator to
bring co-ordination among the SLPs and the children from diverse ethnicity. The educator
will also assist the SLP to help the children in their language and communication gaps
(Crawford & Candlin, 2013).
Professional support for children with ADHD is mental healthcare professionals. A
mental healthcare professional will provide comprehensive behavioural support and thus will
help to recover from mood swings and increase the level of attention (Tarver, Daley & Sayal,
2014). A mental healthcare professional will work in association with an educator to devise
the learning plan for ADHD children and thereby helping them to work on their concentration
(Tarver, Daley & Sayal, 2014).
Children with speech impairments will require SLPs to work on their stammering
problems, difficulty in collecting thoughts or making a complete sentence (Enderby, John &
Petheram, 2013). Professional support for autistic children will be a trained paediatrician who
will help in early recognition of the disease and a psychiatrist with proper counselling will
help for chronic management of the disease (Enderby, John & Petheram, 2013). An
occupational therapist will help with managing fine motor skills and implementing daily
activities to life (Enderby, John & Petheram, 2013).
Children with Down’s syndrome have genetic abnormality and suffer from hearing
loss and neuronal impairment and thus professional support will include trained audiologist.
An audiologist will implement audio-logic interventions (Shields et al., 2013). Children with
cerebral palsy can be effectively handled by physiotherapist. A trained physiotherapist will

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help to evaluate the muscle strength and muscle tone and thus helping them to work on their
hand-eye co-ordination (Shields et al., 2013).
The professional support for children with chronic disease includes constant presence
of emergency care nurse in order to monitor their vital statistics in a periodic manner. There
must be an active set-up for proper medical equipment in order to provide immediate support
at the time of emergency (Ball et al., 2013). Proper counseling of parents by pedagogical
experts will help to improve the home based interventions and framing of welcoming
environment will help the children to suffer from less social exclusion (Burke,
2013).According to the Burke (2013), building inter-professional relationship to support
inclusion helps in building competence of families and thus promotion child’s health and
well-being. Inclusion of parents in the care plan helps to judge the family perspective.
Importance of proper educators in the early childhood development of children centred care
plan and at the same time helps to helps in proper evaluation of the implemented intervention
(Burke, 2013).
Part 4
Pedagogical practices and the skills
In order to handle children with ADHD and ODD, it is required to adopt a strength
based and nonjudgmental approach for providing care or teaching to these children. The
initial approach is to arouse motivation in children (Bryant, Bryant & Smith, 2015). A child
can be made attentive by the use of visual activities or visual aids or by the help of the hand
instructions. It is necessary to reduce the potential distractions for reducing the barrier
between the learning and the child (Galloway, 2018).

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Children suffering for speech disability can be taught individually or in groups. In
order to help children with speech difficulties it is necessary to reduce unnecessary noises as
much as possible, provide them with verbal clues, and speak clearly and deliberately. Another
step is to provide a conducive environment that would encourage the children to accept
another child with special care needs.
For children with autism spectrum disorder it is necessary to follow certain
instructions such as use of the visual aids with simple pictures and signs, Avoiding long
string of verbal conversations as children with autism spectrum disorder normally face with
problems with remembering of the sequence (Koegel et al., 2012). An educator will be able
to generate the confidence in these children by encouraging having control over their life by
identifying their strengths rather than the weaknesses (Sharma, Loreman&Forlin, 2012).
In order to include children with Down’s syndrome, they should be allowed to access
to the curriculum alongside the peers (Malt et al., 2013). Full inclusion of the curriculum in
required for improving the numeracy and the literacy skills. Inclusive children needs to learn
with their non-disabled peers with individual support. Parents and the teachers needs to do
more for ensuring that friendship with the non- disabled peers carry on outside the school.
Although the affected children have additional educational needs, they might also have same
educational needs of their own age. They make progress if they are fully included and
accepted with the feeling that they are a part of the ordinary community. The social
acceptance might have profound impact on the self-esteem of the affected children. The
behavioural approach should differ with age. Liasidou, (2013) has opined that the children
suffering from cerebral palsy should be encouraged with independence. Obstacles should be
removed such that the student can freely move from the lessons to the lessons.

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Conclusion
In conclusion it can be said that apart from the policies and the funding of the
government. The educators taking care of the needs of special child should be properly
trained to develop special skills and responsibilities and should be acquainted with an allied
range of teaching skills. Furthermore, the ambience of the educational institution should be
non –discriminative with adequate amount of workforce including a multidisciplinary team
who are unbiased.

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References
Australian Children’s Education and Care Quality Authority (2017). National Quality
Standards. Access date: 8th October. Retrieved from
https://www.acecqa.gov.au/nqf/national-quality-standard
Australian Government Department of Education and Training. (2017). Inclusion Support
Programme Guidelines 2016-2017 to 2018-2019. Access date: 8th October. Retrieved
from: https://docs.education.gov.au/system/files/doc/other/170606_-
_inclusion_support_programme_guidelines_-_updated.pdf
Australian Research Alliance for Child and Youth (ARACY). (2012). Inclusive Education for
Students with Disability. Access date: 8th October. Retrieved from:
https://www.aracy.org.au/publications-resources/command/download_file/id/246/
filename/Inclusive_education_for_students_with_disability_-
_A_review_of_the_best_evidence_in_relation_to_theory_and_practice.pdf
Bryant, D. P., Bryant, B. R., & Smith, D. D. (2015). Teaching students with special needs in
inclusive classrooms. Sage Publications.
Burke, M. M. (2013). Improving parental involvement: Training special education
advocates. Journal of Disability Policy Studies, 23(4), 225-234.
Cook, R. E., Klein, M. D., & Chen, D. (2015). Adapting early childhood curricula for
children with special needs. Pearson.

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Enderby, P., John, A., & Petheram, B. (2013). Therapy outcome measures for rehabilitation
professionals: speech and language therapy, physiotherapy, occupational therapy.
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Galloway, D. (2018). Schools, pupils and special educational needs. Routledge.
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NSW Department of Education., (2018). 2018 Disability and Inclusion Program. Access
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