Supporting Life Skills for Young Children with Vision Impairment and Other Disabilities: An Early Years Habilitation Handbook

This practical resource is designed to help professionals, parents and carers as they support children with vision impairments to develop independence in everyday tasks. Using the Early Years Foundation Stage framework as a basis, it provides a wealth of strategies and activities to develop key skills, including dressing, maintaining personal hygiene, eating and drinking and road safety.

This is an invaluable tool that can be dipped in and out of to help make learning fun, boosting the child’s confidence and helping create a positive ‘can- do’ attitude when faced with new challenges.

This book:

• Addresses the main problem areas for babies and young visually impaired children and their families, by providing simple explanations of skills and offering strategies and techniques to support progression onto the next stage.
• Is written in a fully accessible style, with photocopiable pages and additional downloadable resources.
• Provides a variety of documentation to chart the child’s development and show progress over time.

Research shows strong indicators that early intervention can reduce or eliminate developmental delays in children with a vision impairment. The supporting strategies in this book help busy professionals and carers to make every opportunity a learning opportunity, allowing children with a vision impairment to become confi dent and independent individuals.

Table of Contents

Common Terms Introduction

Habilitation Skills: Foundation Early Years

Foundation Curriculum

Section: 1.00-2.00 Dressing, Undressing & fastenings

3.00 Personal Hygiene -toileting, hand washing

4.00 Feeding Eating and drinking

5.00 Movement

6.00 Concept development

7.00 Listening and Looking

8.00 Road safety

9.00 Personal safety

10.00 Starting school or nursery

Appendices

Glossary

References