B.C. camp helps non-verbal kids and their families thrive | 24CA News
Day camps are an integral a part of summer season for a lot of B.C. youngsters, however these with particular wants usually discover themselves unnoticed.
That’s one thing the founders of Panda AAC Camp in Vancouver are serving to change. The week-long camp at UBC is an inclusive area for youngsters who’re non-verbal and have particular wants.
AAC refers to Augmentative and Alternative Communication.
The kids at this camp use computer-like units to speak, and the camp is full of assets and educators to assist each the children and their mother and father flourish whereas utilizing them.
“The actual talker is a device — it could be on your phone, it could be on your iPad — where they speak for you,” camp co-founder Joe Kwan defined.
“The whole idea is to create an inclusive environment where educators, specialists and other professionals can come in and share strategies with the families to implement at home and in the community.”
Kwan and his spouse Joyce Lo began the camp three years in the past to raised help their 11-year-old son, who’s minimally verbal, after they skilled an identical occasion in Idaho and realized there was nothing prefer it in B.C.
The camp has grown to help 16 campers and their households, and offers one-to-one help by way of volunteers with skilled backgrounds starting from schooling to speech-language pathology to remedy.
“Children with special needs or disabilities, when they are in a group setting, a lot of times they are on the outside. And sometimes they are brought in for inclusion, but we do find a lot of times they are alone,” Lo stated.
“What we do want to create here for camp is an inclusive environment where they can be part of the group where everybody is the same, they are not alone, everybody uses the same device and everybody speaks the same language — they’re accepted for who they are.”
Jaclyn Fairburn and her eight-year-old son Eric discovered concerning the camp three years in the past, and have been coming ever since.
Like different youngsters his age, her son is energetic, stuffed with laughter and loves sports activities and hanging out with buddies.
But she stated as a non-verbal baby it’s simple for him to turn into remoted. Both the AAC gadget and the camp have had a huge effect on their lives.
“It’s huge, it’s life-changing actually. To know that there’s a camp like this, that it does exist and it’s so successful. He thrives, he looks forward to it every year he gets to make friends.”
“Eric is really expressive, he’s very engaging, laughing, that sort of thing, so this gets across his needs and his wants,” she added. “It can be very challenging, and people often assume what he needs, and that sometimes isn’t accurate, and this gives him a chance to say what he wants to say.”
While the week-long camp offers kids an opportunity to thrive, Fairburn stated it’s equally necessary for fogeys.
Specialists and professionals lead schooling classes the place caregivers can study methods to help their kids at dwelling, together with new info on issues like literacy applications.
Parents are additionally capable of join with each other and share their very own experiences and methods.
That’s an enormous deal for fogeys who could really feel misplaced and alone as they try to navigate supporting a non-verbal baby — one thing that doesn’t include an instruction handbook.
“They tell you that your child is having speech difficulties and they suggest this and they say here you go and figure it out from there,” Fairburn stated.
“They don’t tell you that the school might not have training on it, that the teachers might not have training on it, how do you get training, who do you speak to.”
After per week of blending and mingling, academic classes and enjoyable afternoon actions and excursions — all utilizing the AAC units — the Panda camp will conclude Saturday with a particular occasion to rejoice the members and a spotlight reel slideshow.
But the work continues year-round, Kwan stated, within the hopes of growing each a neighborhood of fogeys, and a broader social understanding of youngsters like theirs who’re slightly bit completely different.
“We want society at large to understand, to know how to be more inclusive, create a more inclusive environment — whether that be a classroom, at school, at home, in community,” he stated.
“Even though a person doesn’t speak, it doesn’t meant they don’t have something to say,” Fairburn added.
