Visit to Communication DEALL

The visit to Comm DEALL was extremely useful. I believe we received more inputs here when it comes to designing specifically for autistic people.

Activities & Programs: When we first reached Comm DEALL, we were allowed to sit in on a group activity session. Around 5 teachers were handling about 10 children - ranging from 1 to 2 years of age. This session involved using songs in familiar nursery rhyme tunes to teach the children to respond to their own names, answer basic questions such as "How are you?", associate actions such as clapping, stomping their feet, etc with the relevant lyrics of the song, associate emotions with actions - such as 'happy' to saying hurrah, 'sad' to crying, and 'love' to hugging, 'feeling tired' to sleeping, etc. Group sessions were few, conducted in a room with single chairs and desks and stools for teachers. The children sat in a circle with their teachers behind them. The walls had a line across on which picture cards for things like toilet, eating, washing hands, sleeping, etc. were hung.

Before this activity began, the children were being taught to eat independently. One of them was being taught to eat with one hand, with a teacher holding one hand down and making him eat with the other. 

They usually try working in small groups of three and there are also many one-on-one activities. We witnessed a few one-on-one sessions that took place in small cubicles covered with one-way mirrors so only someone on the outside could see inside. In one session, a teacher was handling two children and was making them place different animal cutouts on a board. In another, a teacher was trying to calm a girl down by blowing bubbles, trying to get her attention. And in another, the speech therapist was trying to gain a boy's attention by blowing a balloon so that she could start the therapy session. We were told that the speech therapy mainly consisted of getting the children to respond to/say their own name, answer questions, etc. 

The faculty handles a set of children in 3 hour sessions during the day, in different batches. They're mostly segregated by age and not severity. Comm DEALL handles students of ages 0-6. They do not focus much on diagnosis. The children who come here are mostly diagnosed as having certain features that could suggest autism and the school's main goal is to try to bring these children upto the highest level of normalcy possible and then mainstream them. The schedule was designed so as to replicate a play school schedule - eating, group activities, songs, etc. When asked how many students on an average were successfully mainstreamed, we were told mainstreaming them into playschool wasn't too much of an issue because the environment was more or less similar. Problems may arise only when they move to Grade 1 and the classroom environment and prolonged study hours with few breaks proves to be taxing for them and students slowly start filtering out.

Comm DEALL focuses primarily on early intervention. They have three main professionals: a Speech therapist, an Occupational Therapist and a Developmental Psychologist. A child psychiatrist visits twice a week and has a separate office for herself where she interacts with the child. They have 8 different divisions of therapy which they address one by one over the 10-12 months that the student is with them. The school's range has always been 0-6 year olds, but when the school first started out in 2000, the students being enrolled were around 4 years of age and above whereas today, they have children of even 1-1.5 years of age, possibly indicating that diagnosis is possible much earlier these days. The school works from 9-5, 5 days a week. Some students who require extra time and attention, stay for longer than the 3 hour session.

Play Area: We were then taken to a closed terrace area which was used as a play area. The following were present here:

• A 4-sided rope ladder suspended from rods that ran along the asbestos ceiling. Click here for a picture. 
• A hanger sort of thing suspended from the rods above, that could be moved along the rods. The child could hang from this. 
• Plastic slide, plastic animals and cars to ride on
• Trampoline large enough for two children to play on
• A chair-swing suspended from the rods above, high enough so it cannot be accessed by the child himself but he needs to be lifted and put in it.
• Plastic bouncing balls to bounce on.
• Mattresses placed on the floor. 
• Table and chair and shelves for storing things like stacking toys, etc.
• Narrow wooden planks that are placed over tires to create a narrow walk way for the child to walk on in a straight line. Obstacles such as blocks and cubes are placed along the way for the child to learn to step over.
• A circular tunnel-tent. Click here for a picture.
  
  A child needs constant supervision in this area. Some children, depending on their own personal development and skills, run errands, can climb stairs confidently, etc. If some children are extremely hyperactive, it is recommended to administer medicines side-by-side along with therapy.
  
  

Changes: Some changes the faculty would ideally like to see in Comm DEALL:

• Space is a problem for them, so ideally more space. They would like to have bigger rooms and better stairs and railings along the stairs. (They've placed yellow bands on some of the steps (like yellow bands on escalators) because these weren't previously very visible and the faculty itself have had a few accidents.)
• They wouldn't mind if some of things are fixed to the ground or in one specific place, such as the trampoline or the rope ladder.
• The one-way mirrors in the session rooms are extremely helpful but they would also ideally like sound proof rooms. 
• Child friendly toilets would be useful too. The children find the toilets really high and are usually frightened by the large sized toilet bowl because it's like a large hole they can fall into.
• A set of shelves to place the children's bags in, ideally with name tags on them so the children can be told to bring so-and-so person's bag, etc. We were told these children are hyperlexic and most of them can read and so they generally like building on this ability. 
• We were told it would be better to play down on colors as the children do not react well to large amounts of color. So if we're thinking of color coding, we must remember not to overdo it.
• More outdoor opportunities.
• A visiting child psychiatrist and pediatrician. 
• Respite groups.
  Comm DEALL also makes kits and products to aid autistic children. Click here to read about them.
  
  We were also given one more extremely useful resource. A PowerPoint Presentation on what kinds of features the faculty would ideally like their physical environment to have. This is very specific and will be extremely useful for all the groups: residential, educational and medical. Contact me for the PPT. I strongly suggest you take it from me before you get too deep into your design process, especially design of the interiors.

Ruchika Nambiar

COMM DEALL notes : We would like to make a clarification regarding the following statement made in your blog: "The problem arises when they move to Grade 1 and the classroom environment and prolonged study hours with few breaks proves to be taxing for them and students slowly start filtering out". This may have arisen from a misinterpretation of our communication with you.
This statement is a bit misleading particularly since an ongoing follow up study of the
children who have gone through our program since 2000, suggests that over 65% are in mainstream schools.

We - the authors of this blog - have edited the sentence above therefore to "Problems may arise.... etc..."
With all due apologies to COMM DEALL.