In The Loop

  T-I-L-T

Touch Interaction Learning Trust

Training and Therapy Network for Early Years School Learning Assistants and children with PMLD/Autism

Touch Feedback: Communication

Children with complex disabilities schools project and training for personal assistants.

This program began at the beginning of the Autumn term 2010 with the nursery reception class at Side by Side Integrated School in Upper Clapton. I am working with five children with profound and multiple learning disabilities on a one to one for six interaction sessions each. I will then be delivering a practical support/ training package for each learning assistant in relation to and together with the child they are daily involved with for another six sessions each. 

These sessions will be practical and hands-on following the interest and changing motivations of the child and using movement-touch, voice/sound, action and pause to create a playful tempo for involvement and dialogue according to the preferences of the child. This will hone skills of sensitivity in order to be able to notice, stay with, and accomodate small responses and subtle indications that a child constantly gives out. So for these few sessions the emphasis is on the care-giver learning the rhythm and pauses of a child whilst extending and at times challenging specific elements- as a form of humour and play- rather than informing from the outset given goals. 

The learning assistants will create as an end piece, a personal diary of this involvement using photos, words, drawings, video extracts etc. At the end there will be an honest discussion about whether this interactive approach can be called dialogue for a non-verbal child and their learning assistant. This will broaden into a discussion about what dialogue is when sense-responses do not follow our anticipated directions but veer in all kinds of movements where we need to adapt as an on-going state. What is the connection between activation and rest for both a child and an adult as part of a single involvement? How do child and adult mediate these positions between them non-verbally? These will be some of the topics that this practical work will begin to touch on.

*Please go to the page T I L T for more detailed information about the ethos behind this approach and for a down-loadable leaflet. 

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UPDATE: May 2011

Note- because of the success of this pilot scheme it has turned into a rolling program in which new children/LSAs are introduced to the program as others finish.

However there are some groups of children where the input is now continuous yet subject to three monthly reviews:

1. Children with profound medical/developmental difficulties- such as a boy with Chromosone 17 deletion who now has on-going weekly Shiatsu sessions to help with relaxation, breathing, responsiveness, warmth.

2. Children who are in the middle of a skill-learning process. - such as a boy who is learning to walk and where attentional games and touch interaction help with problems of fear and help him to gain a wider map of associations in which on-off balance is part of a movement towards walking, sitting, standing, rocking rather than an isolated moment of collapse. Anticipation and creative alteration is at the heart of this long-term program.

3. Children with emotional problems due to language and sensory issues that make the class-room environment challenging for them. These children need on-going positive interaction where there is an almost ceremonial playing out of song-making, movements and quiet periods in which they learn to pace their levels of engagement.