Multiple Disabilities

Multiple Disabilities

Jessica Combs & Katie Barker

Bag Books

"UK-wide charity providing tactile and multi-sensory books to people with learning disabilities.

Multi-sensory books can be enjoyed without being understood. They are designed for people with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities, people with Severe Learning Disabilities or people with severe Autistic Spectrum Disorders.

Multi-sensory books are stimulating, engaging and totally interactive. We believe that everyone with learning disabilities deserves a chance to reach his or her own potential; we are thrilled to assist so many of them in achieving this." -bagbooks.com

"It's not about focusing on their disabilities, it's about focusing on their abilities,"

Bag Books

"The best way to teach, in any classroom, not only mine, is to spend time with the kids and get to know them."

Body Activity

Risk Factors

Chromosomal

Abnormalities

Traumatic

Brain

Injury

• Mother abuses drugs
• Mother poorly nourished
• Fetal Alcohol Syndrome
• Shaken Baby Syndrome

• Down Syndrome
• Genetic/Metabolic Disorders

Motor

Development

• In the 2003-2004 school year, 22,459 students received special education services under TBI.
• Each year, 1 in 500 school age children will be hospitalized for a head injury
• 1 in 30 will sustain a significant head injury by age 15.

• abnormal muscle tone
• difficulty sitting
• moving from a sitting to a standing position.
• muscle tension causing spasticity
• difficulty performing tasks such as eating, dressing, and using the bathroom is difficult.

Adaptive

Skills

Self care skills are important for students with multiple disabilities.

• dressing
• personal hygiene
• toileting
• feeding

Intellectual

Functioning

• A multi-disciplinary team consisting of the student’s parents, educational specialists, and medical specialists in the areas in which the individual demonstrates problems should work together to plan and coordinate necessary services.
• Involvement of the appropriate professionals.
• The arrangement of places school and homes must be easily accessible.
• Have a buddy system that ensures their needs are heard and that they get aid when needed.
• Give Simple and Specific and Systematic instructions to what you exactly want the person to do.
• Use visual aids when communicating with the child.
• Engage the child regularly in oral language activity.

• IQ scores that are approximately 35 points or more below the norm (65 or lower).
• Students with multiple disabilities vary in their academic abilities.
• Some multiply disabled will only learn how to make eye contact, track objects with their eyes, and respond to stimuli around them.
• More advanced students will learn to count money, and have strong literacy skills.

Incidence

Families

Accommodations

& Strategies

The U.S. Department of Education reports 5,971,495 students receiving special education services in the 2003-2004 school year. Of that number, roughly 2.2%, or 132,333 students, received special education services based on a classification of multiple disabilities.

A Person with

Multiple Disabilities

Augmentative & Alternative Communication

• Time is needed to ensure their safety at home in times of condition like seizures.
• Financially, the medical/transport fees may place burdens on the family.
• The effort needed to ensure safety of the person will require family members to take turns to look after that person.
• Individuals have only limited speech or communication
• Requires a lot of patience with individuals with multiple disabilities

may experience...

Augmentative and alternative communication is an instructional technique, device, or system that supports communication in individuals with multiple sensory, physical, and cognitive impairments. This includes choice boards, object prompts and symbols, and any kind computer or microswitch technology. Microswitches are often used when there is limited physical range of motion; these devices limit fatigue. All augmentative communication devices share four key features: symbols, displays, selection, and output.

Teaching Strategies

Assistance With Technology

One area of support that can be particularly effective for all involved is peer tutoring. Peer tutoring has been proven to have positive results for students with multiple disabilities in a number of separate research studies. However, care must be taken that the tutoring is not a one-way relationship, but is reciprocal. The student with multiple disabilities should also be able to provide something to the tutoring process, even if it is a simple social behavior.

• Difficulty in basic physical mobility
• fine-motor deficits that can cause penmanship problems
• slow clerical speed.
• forget skills through disuse
• trouble generalizing skills from one situation to another
• lack high level thinking and comprehension skills
• poor problem-solving skills
• Ability to engage in abstract thinking is limited
• poor test taker due to limiting factors of the disabilities
• difficulty locating the direction of sound
• speech that is characterized by substitution, omissions
• difficulty learning about objects and object relationships
• lack maturity in establishing career goals
• face problems in socializing with peers

One technological support can be found in the hand-held computer. Using software such as the Visual Assistant, teachers and service providers can program a number of different skill sets and instructions to be accessible to the student at any time. These technology can include visual information in the form of digital pictures or line drawings, as well as audio messages and instructions.

Challenges

Physical/Health

• A variety of medical problems may accompany severe disabilities. Examples include seizures, sensory loss, hydrocephalus, and scoliosis.
• May be physically clumsy and awkward
• May be unsuccessful in games involving motor skills

Behavioral

• May display an immature behavior inconsistent with chronological age
• May exhibit an impulsive behavior and low frustration level
• May have difficulty forming interpersonal relationships
• May have limited self-care skills and independent community living skills

Psychological

• May Feel ostracized
• Tendency to Withdraw from society
• Students with multiple disabilities may become fearful, angry, and upset in the face of forced or unexpected changes.
• May execute self-injurious behavior

Characteristics

Multiple disabilities

People with severe or multiple disabilities may exhibit a wide range of characteristics, depending on the combination and severity of disabilities, and the person’s age. There are, however, some traits they may share, including:

is a term for a person with several disabilities, such as a sensory disability associated with a motor disability. Examples include but are not limited to Down Syndrome, Cerebral Palsy, Autism Spectrum Disorders, Deaf-Blindness, ADD or ADHD, Physical, Cognitive, Emotional, and Learning Difficulties.

References

wikipedia.ord/multiple-disabilities

http://www.projectidealonline.org/multipleDisabilities.php

http://nichcy.org/schoolage

http://www.perkins.org/resources/scout/students-with-multiple-disabilities/

http://learningdisabilities.about.com/od/mo/g/multiple_disabi.htm

http://www.familyconnect.org/parentsitehome.asp?SectionID=79