Themen

Anthroposophical Curative Education & Social Therapy ...

... aims to provide an individualized physical, soul, and spiritual development for children, youth and adults with disabilities. It aims to help establish an honorable and self-determined life and supports community and societal integration. It allows their contribution to society become visible.

«Whoever wants to educate children with developmental problems and disabilities will never be finished, but will find that each child presents a new problem, a new mystery. But he will only discover what he needs to do in each specific case if he allows himself to be led by the real Being within the child. It is not a comfortable job, but it is the only one that is real.»

Rudolph Steiner

Introduction

Individualisation and Integration

Individualisation and Integration are among the leading principles underlying the work with people with disabilities.

Every human being has his or her own needs; bodily, psychological, and spiritual. Disability cannot be used as a reason to withhold from a person those opportunities for personal development available to him or her, nor his acceptance into the community or his individual rights as a citizen.

How integration and individualisation can be realised in each individual case is governed by certain guidelines and general viewpoints, but no uniform solutions. Integration in pluralist societies can only maintain that a decision about what integration means for a particular individual must be determined by the said individual.

On no account can it be permitted that institutions and special programs for persons with disability, who provide the opportunities for persons living in special circumstances, are marginalised and ridiculed. Naturally, the institutions themselves must always be on the alert in regard to individualisation and integration to fulfill their function as a bridge between the individual and the community in the best way possible.

Caring for the development of children and young people

Curative education is always based on a correlation of several factors affecting the development of the child or young person on the one hand and, at the same time, the development of his or her environment. It depends largely on the conditions of life within a given society whether human beings with disability find themselves integrated or marginalised.

Curative education begins with the diagnosis. On the basis of this professional assessment, the child or young person may be understood in his or her physical, psychological and spiritual development, and also within his or her social relationships.

Therapeutic and educational methods are available which address these specific needs, always in connection with counseling and in cooperation with the relatives.

Curative education is an inter-disciplinary task in which different professions and functions have to work together in close cooperation. It includes remedial teachers, medical practitioners, teachers, therapists and artists.

Social Therapy – Quality of life for adults

The concept social therapy encompasses a broad spectrum of possibilities for persons with disability of any kind; living in community, sheltered employment, shared accommodation, supervised living or living under constant care, adult education programs and so on.

The aim is always to enable the individual human being to experience a fulfilled existence in a social environment with others, to develop personally, and to be able to make a meaningful contribution to his/her community and to society as a whole – in other words, to live and experience a full biography.

In the face of the guiding principles of normalisation, integration and autonomy, institutions have the responsibility of ensuring an individual guidance through life that facilitates the greatest possible amount of independence, but at the same time offers a protected social environment that allows the persons to continue their development and education.

The degree of care, assistance and supervision appropriate for each individual is determined by his or her needs.

Social Therapy has the task of establishing a framework of existence that allows the individual to develop socially, in the work sphere, and in his or her cultural and spiritual life. In addition, it must provide a program of therapies and individual care.