Local association and Formentera Council promote workshops for children with developmental disabilities

The counsellor of Social Welfare, Equality and Youth of the Formentera Island Council, Dolores Fernández, together with the president of l'Associació Pau Mayans for the integration of individuals with autism spectrum disorders, Núria Alandes, used a press conference to announce a range of therapeutic workshops for children with special educational needs. The workshops will be held after normal school hours as a complement to basic education and are intended to make rehabilitation and specific therapeutic treatments available to Formentera families.

The workshops are aimed at children aged 3 to 14 with any type of disability, with a maximum of six children per group. They will be imparted at the Day Centre Mondays and Wednesdays from 5 to 6:30pm.

APMIPTEA workshops employ a method known as TEACH for creating structure in classroom, using adapted materials to develop habits of autonomy and solo work. The programme is based on Analysis of Applied Behaviour (ABA), which is centred around a teaching of skills and adapted behaviour, modification of disruptive behaviour and a teaching of proper social and verbal conduct.

The main goals at the therapeutic workshops include promoting the integration of children into natural situations and contexts, skill learning in all areas of child development by means of different work systems, promotion of personal autonomy and independence through routines and strategies, teaching self-control for normal daily living and reducing behavioural problems.

The team is comprised of a specialized ABA psychologist, three therapists from the association and two volunteers who have received subject-specific course training through APMIPTEA and with the collaboration of the other professionals employed at the Day Centre. The therapeutic team coordinates with teachers from the schools whenever necessary and holds parent meetings once a month to insure the continuity of work rhythm at home.

The course, which started in February, was made possible thanks to the initiative of the Associació Pau Mayans and the collaboration of Formentera's Office of Social Welfare. The Office of Social Welfare, detecting the need in Formentera for this type of therapy, has put its support behind the project and the idea of a specific Formentera-based association to handle such work. To this end, the Council has funded a large part of the association's activity and managed to lower prices in order to make the workshops available to any family that might need them.

As a matter of fact, workshops have periodically been held for adults, the elderly, young children and sufferers of fibromyalgia since 2005. The project, “Educating values”, is a play-therapy initiative intended for people with disabilities (physical, mental, or sensorial) and their families, held until last year.

The project aimed to meet the leisure and free-time necessities of the groups in question as identified by the staff at Social Services. The workshops and activities took place at the Office of Social Welfare and Youth Services and at the Retiree's Club of Sant Francesc, with the goal of creating a leisure space for residents with some type of disability, and at the same time, granting family members a period of rest.

Since then, with the opening in April 2011 of the Formentera Day Centre, the elderly group and the group of adults with disabilities have come under the umbrella of work provided at the centre. The activities offered for children with disabilities have since been maintained by the day centre staff (one disability specialist and two day counsellors) without changes to the objectives. However, with the passage of time regulations came to require that the centre's personnel be specially-trained in matters of public health and, in 2012, the Office of Social Welfare decided to suspend workshops until a formula could be found that would allow for this project's evolution and growth. The joint work with the Associació Pau Mayans has since been able to reactivate this profile of activities.