(Wellbeing and Visual Impairment) (Bien-Etre and VI) Erasmus Project

Project Title

(Wellbeing and Visual Impairment) (Bien-Etre and VI)

Project Key Action

This project related with these key action: Cooperation for innovation and the exchange of good practices

Project Action Type

This project related with this action type : School Exchange Partnerships

Project Call Year

This project’s Call Year is 2019

Project Topics

This project is related with these Project Topics: New innovative curricula/educational methods/development of training courses; Health and wellbeing; Disabilities – special needs

Project Summary

We aim to explore varied ways to positively manage mental health and wellbeing through a range of interventions, exploration and training with our parallel cohorts of young adult visually impaired (VI) students in France and in UK. This is a focus students particularly want to address as does the government in supporting development of resilience in young people as part of their mental health and on-going wellbeing. RNC students aided by residential care and counselling staff members organised a Mental Health and Wellbeing week beginning 4th March 2019 (programme attached in Annex.) We intend using practical measures, various exercise activities and short surveys (accessible online) where self-reporting can be compared and contrasted with measured and perceived change alongside continued and stronger engagement with their education. Students come to our specialist residential facilities for intensive and broad training. Due to visual impairment they may have had difficult experiences of attempted inclusion in mainstream education, or because of later onset conditions, frequent deterioration, trauma and so forth. Being amongst peers where their Vi is common place and they are not the exception to the rule, helps them to develop as individuals and give them strength. However technical reports suggest many Vi youngsters suffer disproportionately higher levels of general anxiety, as they grow up . In February 2019, French Education Ministers launched an experiment providing more time is spent on Wednesday afternoons (as in UK) on arts and sport and on Music, to try to make the country’s students less miserable.(the Times, Sat Feb 16, 2019, p45)

To support the mh+w of students we must first support the mh+w of staff. Staff who have good mental wellbeing are more likely to have the necessary resources to be able to manage and plan during or after stressful episodes whether with a pupil, a class, a colleague, an inspector or a parent. Having a residential element, it is important that training and services are readily available, revised and refreshed routinely and positively, not just in response to any particular complex incident. Perhaps drowning in counsellors after a traumatic event adds difficulty to stress management, while having an organisation aware of itself and its capabilities to manage what comes is more agile and responsive before any overwhelming occurs.

Regular physical activity links with lower depression and anxiety rates. Exercise is beneficial for mh+w, as is being out in the fresh air, feeling sun wind and rain on your skin.

As I write we are hosting our French partners in Hereford, including a whole days demonstration from staff and students of their basket can and straw weaving curriculum, which I have long wanted to reintroduce for education, craft ,occupation, in place of physical exercise for hands, (often weak in VI with lack of grasp and strength of hold. Things a physiotherapist might treat with exercises are improved by intricate repetitive actions and strength build in developing items in the craft. From France their specialism is “motricité” where a staff member will use craft as therapy and exercise to encourage improvement in dexterity and strength. So many blind teens brought up necessarily without writing and by using the hugely helpful IT resources, have difficulty opening a tin or bottle in the kitchen. The craft is of itself therapeutic and our colleagues suggested that as with doing the washing up after a kitchen lesson with blind students, one to one, it is possible to learn far more about your students and their hopes and fears, pleasures desires, and so direct activities to promote the positive sand manage or turn around the other facets. That can be singular or a group activity too. It is possible to have the work as a hobby, making small items for cart sales or artistically with larger items developing your understanding of the possibilities, It can also lead, by making twisted, whipped and wound straw skeps (hives) to the emergence of yet another strand with many spin offs, bee keeping which our French colleagues would like to consider introducing at CSRP alongside their horticulture strand which is increasingly independent of chemicals. Although CSRP are not allowed to profit they do produce fruits and vegetables, flower and plant displays for office foyers in the locality, alongside ground maintenance. Much of the cane work is commissioned or repair and restoration projects. Introducing bees could for each school develop in tandem the care of the bees and the hive, uses of honey, mead, making cosmetics and products such a candles from the wax. So aspects or occupations which allow creativity, exercise mind and body, produce desirable products and which can become income streams for the colleges, and in time using also business strand input for small or independent businesses provides more of a future for our less academic or more challenged students.

EU Grant (Eur)

Funding of the project from EU: 70128 Eur

Project Coordinator

Royal National College for the Blind & Country: UK

Project Partners

• Etablissement Régional d’Enseignement Adapté aux Déficients Visuels Cité scolaire René Pellet