“Speranta” provides services for children with disabilities, their families, teachers and professionals. Annually, over 250 children are being provided with necessary psychological,
pedagogic, medical and social support there. With over 12 years of experience in inclusive education, the RF and EARC “Speranta” are now nationwide models of good practice. The most important recent achievements are: the IEN (Inclusive Education Network), the new centre for inclusive education that addresses the rural area, and the web portal
www.copil-speranta.ro.
The “Open Doors” project series, financed by OSI-MHI, is meant to change the attitudes towards disabled children, in order to facilitate their social and educational inclusion. EARC “Speranta” represents a nationwide model of good practice in this matter.
The Romanian legal framework stipulates the right to education for all children regardless of the type or level of disability. Legally speaking, children with disabilities have equal opportunities to participate in social life, including education. Still, lots of disabled children are unaccounted for in terms of education. Through the “Open Doors” project, the Rehabilitation Foundation “Speranta” and The Educational Assistance and Resources Centre “Speranta” began to develop services countywide in inclusive education and early intervention, aiming to assure equal chances to education for disabled children in rural area
through promoting inclusive education.
The RF and EARC “Speranta” have initiated a national alliance (the Inclusive Education Network – IEN) united around the inclusive philosophy, that aims at refocusing the real implementation of the inclusive education legislation, so that no child is left behind. The goal of this project is to promote inclusive education in Romania by initiating, extending and developing the IEN as an action and lobby force for improving and implementing the inclusive education legislation. The project aims towards a better informed community by increasing the access to information and by facilitating the process of exchanging ideas and efficient communication between involved actors. This was realized by creating a web portal. Another output of the project will be the centre in Comlosul Mare, which was set up as a support service in rural area for 50 children with disabilities, their families and teachers. The centre is developed in partnership with the local school and town hall, following the “Speranta” model, and benefits a large rural community where there is no service of this kind whatsoever.
Speranta emphasizes on the acceptance of differences between students. 75% of pre-school age disabled children who attend "Speranta" are included in mainstreaming
kindergartens. 95% of school age disabled children who attend them are included in mainstreaming schools.
The IEN was initially developed as a county-level alliance to support the inclusive education
philosophy in mainstreaming schools and kindergartens in rural area. In less than 6 months after setting up the first partnerships, the decision was made to go countrywide via the World Wide Web. Developing an inclusive education network was needed to explore opportunities that a single organization could not, such as: to provide education services that meet the needs of the disabled children; to develop the organizations in order to trigger partnership structures between all education providers; to develop new ways to meet the community needs through constant collaborations and partnerships. The IEN is now open not only to education providers, but also to individuals who wish to join.
They offer a collection of more than 10 books written by professionals in “Speranta” on different topics: Autism, ADHD, Asperger syndrome, challenging behavior, learning difficulties, Down’s syndrome, multiple disability, early intervention and so on. Additionally, there is the Inclusive Education Magazine for which we are preparing the 8th issue; parents and teachers benefit from a large variety of informative materials on paper support and on the IEN web site.
