People with IDD are entitled to lead full, rich lives in their communities and enjoy everything that the world around them offers, including culture, architecture, health services, and social services.
The academic world is one of the most important places where professionals, therapists, government officials and policy-makers of the future are trained in a wide variety of subjects.
In accordance with this outlook, the Foundation has funded several university courses in recent years. This is in addition to the Shalem Foundation’s investment in basic and refresher courses for caregivers who work with people with IDD.
In these courses, students in a variety of disciplines learn about people with IDD (and their families) in the various departments of Israel’s universities and academic colleges.
The Shalem Foundation has notified the country’s institutions of higher learning that it is prepared to fund courses on the topic of people with IDD. During the 2015–2016 academic year, the Foundation funded nine such courses.
The academic world is one of the most important places where professionals, therapists, government officials and policy-makers of the future are trained in a wide variety of subjects.
In accordance with this outlook, the Foundation has funded several university courses in recent years. This is in addition to the Shalem Foundation’s investment in basic and refresher courses for caregivers who work with people with IDD.
In these courses, students in a variety of disciplines learn about people with IDD (and their families) in the various departments of Israel’s universities and academic colleges.
The Shalem Foundation has notified the country’s institutions of higher learning that it is prepared to fund courses on the topic of people with IDD. During the 2015–2016 academic year, the Foundation funded nine such courses.
A survey of three of them follows.
“Body, space and everything in between”: People with IDD
Architecture and Town Planning Faculty, The Technion Institute of Technology
Architecture and Town Planning Faculty, The Technion Institute of Technology
Architects face many challenges when they plan a structure. These challenges have to do with various topics and disciplines, including the social sciences, the humanities, economics, management, culture and education.
Architecture students at the Technion must also deal with complex challenges in their studies. As they progress, they learn about town planning and the planning of structures such as public buildings, cultural institutions, residential buildings and school buildings.
The planning and architecture world deals with the health services field, among many others. Planning of the physical environment has a significant effect on human functioning. Studies have shown that the quality of hospitalization and treatment spaces has a major influence on the nature of the treatment and the length of the recovery period. A health-promoting environment can lower tension and anxiety levels in human beings, making their stay in hospitals, hospices, day-treatment centers and other health-care institutions easier to bear.
Everyday activities that are so easy and effortless for most of the population, are a complex daily challenge for people with IDD because people with IDD have difficulty acquiring learning and communication skills. They may also suffer from a low level of motor and cognitive functioning.
The Technion offers a theory course that focuses on the planning of health-promoting environments. This course supplements the studio course.
This course discusses the healing environment in the holistic sense, as well as in terms of the environment and the community. The aim of the course is to provide students with planning tools and to focus on issues connected with the creation of places and spaces while paying attention to the unique needs of people with IDD.
Twenty eight students took the course. Of them, 12 participated in the practical studio course and submitted projects.
The theoretical course provided students with an introduction to the world of health-promoting environments, as well as solid facts about people with IDD. The theoretical course helped the students cope with the complex challenges of environmental planning for this population. In the studio course, the students obtained hands-on experience with an entire process focused on the architectural planning of a building that provided services to people with IDD. The students used what they had learned in the theoretical course to develop their projects.
The planning course, taken in conjunction with theoretical course, offers a promising platform for the advancement of the aims of the Shalem Foundation, which devotes its efforts to improving the quality of life of people with IDD and promotes awareness among the Israeli public of this population’s needs. The course also helped showcase the topic of intellectual disability for the students — the architects of the future.
The core of the semester exercise, which the third- and fourth-year architecture students had to perform, was the planning of a day-treatment center for people with IDD.
During the planning process, the students discussed various issues related to space and the creation of a space.
Special emphasis was placed on the way that people in general, and people with IDD in particular, experience architectural space, with special focus on the relationship between human beings and their environment and on sensual perception.
The students discussed architectural involvement that interprets space and programs. They also focused on the relationship between structures and the contexts where they are located and the relationship between structures and the community. The students attempted to create a high-quality environment that met the target population’s special needs.
The projects the students submitted for the practical studio course put the theoretical and practical content that they had learned in both courses to good use. The students said that the theoretical course was necessary for all students of architecture, with or without reference to the population of people with IDD, because it provided the background and tools that enable architects to see the client for whom they are planning and to turn theoretical clients into actual ones.
The course was conceived and coordinated by architect Alon Zohar, with the professional support of Professor Dafna Fisher Gewirtzman of the Faculty of Architecture and of Professor Alona Nitzan-Shiftan, head of the architectural track at the Technion, who noted that the projects submitted in the studio course were on a particularly high level.
The aim is that the theoretical knowledge and the students’ projects could serve as a significant component in developing innovative thought regarding the planning design of a living environment for people with IDD.
Pictured: Professor Alona Nitzan-Shiftan evaluates the students’ projects, and architectural student Avishai Sussman presents his project.
Intervention methods for people with intellectual disabilities and their families
The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
In recent years, work with people with IDD (intellectual developmental disorder) has become a major field in social work. Social workers are professionally committed to contributing to the quality of life and well-being of people with disabilities and their families. They follow the current value-oriented position that acknowledges the powers of the individual and focuses on the discourse of the rights of people with IDD. The aim of the course is to teach the students intervention methods for people with IDD and their families as they become familiar with the way the family life cycle changes from the moment a child with disabilities is born until he or she becomes an adult with IDD.
The course — an introduction to the topic of people with IDD and their families — included lectures and learning about various contexts for people with IDD. The lecturers were given by guest lecturers and professionals who work with people with IDD and their families. The planned study tours did not take place because of the security situation.
Ms. Goldie Marans, the academic coordinator and a main lecturer in the course, said, “Twenty-one students who had chosen to study this field took the course. They were involved; they spoke, argued and joined me on a fascinating journey into the world of intellectual disability (ID). They wanted to know why this was still happening, and wanted to understand the differences between ID and autism. They discussed the right to terminate pregnancy, as well as the siblings of the people with IDD …, and so on.
“The students were required to perform two tasks: an intermediate group task and an individual final project. The results were of high quality. This was a fascinating journey during which we taught and learned about the world of IDD once more, through the students’ eyes. The world in 2016 is different, as are the options that medicine provides regarding health services, well-being and intervention methods that are not the methods of the past.
“The Paul Baerwald School of Social Work and Social Welfare will continue to teach this subject in the belief that the students, the social workers of the future, will need these tools in order to perform their professional duties in the best possible manner.”
The development and existence of this course were made possible thanks to the academic and administrative support of Dr. Yehudith Avnir and Dr. Shirley Warner of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem’s School of Social Work and Social Welfare.
Issues in the study of disabilities and their implications for genetic counseling
The Department for Genetic Counseling, School of Medicine, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
The immense technological developments that have taken place in recent years in genetics present genetic counselors not only with professional challenges involved in learning and understanding genetic tools but also with ethical challenges of responsibility for and insight into the disabilities of the patient and his family.
Since genetic testing and diagnosis of IDD have become more detailed and precise over the years, it is possible to diagnose an increasing number of families with IDD and pregnancies that do not carry an early risk of IDD. Despite the advantages of this diagnosis, it presents the ones diagnosed, together with their families and the medical team, with many challenges.
The purpose of the course is to develop students’ theoretical and practical knowledge in the field of genetic counseling for people with disabilities (particularly IDD) and their families. The course focuses extensively on issues connected with genetic testing before and during pregnancy, the diagnosis of IDD and the dilemmas that might arise following such testing.
The main topics are:
• Facts and figures on people with ID in Israel
• Familiarization with up to date genetic diagnostic tools for an IDD
• Principal theories in the study of disabilities, and individual meetings with people with disabilities and their parents
• Social welfare legislation and Israeli policies regarding people with disabilities
• Professional dilemmas regarding genetic counseling for people with ID before and during pregnancy
• Tools for conveying bad news to parents or pregnant women on the discovery of a genetic factor that may result in ID
• Counseling tools in cases where the diagnosis of the pregnancy or the family is uncertain
• Public and professional attitudes in Israel toward people with ID
Dr. Shiri Shekedy Rapid, the course coordinator, says:
“Students who come from the clinical world had a hard time dealing with a course like this, its variety of lecturers and its teaching methods. Still, they found the parts of the course that had to do with meeting the families, conveying bad news and attitudes important and interesting. The main insight is that a course of this kind must be conducted as a workshop with role-playing and work in small groups.”
Twelve students in the Master’s program in the track for genetic counseling in medicine, nursing and public health took the course.
The development of the course and its existence were made possible thanks to the academic and administrative support of Professor Vardiella Meiner, director of the Center for Clinical Genetics at the Department of Genetics and Metabolic Diseases in the School of Medicine, Hadassah University Medical Center, Ein Kerem, and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
The Shalem Foundation is a partner in the development and funding of these courses.
Pictures from the coures "Body, space and everyting berween", The Technion
