DSA’s Children Services endeavours to promote services for children with Down syndrome from pre-school ages up to the age of 16. Through these years, our team has both conceptualised and implemented plans to provide more services and support to its members. In 2008, Children Services plans to expand on its current provision of services to foster closer working relationships to support the schools, students and their families.

Integration Facilitation Support Programme (IFSP)
As part of its ongoing efforts to provide support for children with Down syndrome in mainstream education, DSA’s Integration Facilitation Support Programme (IFSP) serves to support children with Down syndrome in mainstream pre-schools and primary schools.

In its continuing outreach and partnership with mainstream schools, DSA is providing a range of school based consultancy services, which include:

Providing teacher training in the school through imparting specific strategies in assisting children with Down syndrome make academic gains.

Training teachers in behaviour management strategies to remediate behaviour problems for the child with Down syndrome by directly working on-site with the teacher in the school and classroom.

Providing workshops and talks to schools in understanding and working with children with Down syndrome.

Our Children Services team currently works with 2 mainstream primary schools with an enrolment of 6 students with Down syndrome. With several other schools expressing their interest in DSA’s teacher training support, we will expand our consultancy services to other mainstream primary schools serving students with Down syndrome in 2008.

Social Interaction Skills Support
In addition to the integration facilitation programme, Children Services will be providing social skills training to equip our young members with Down syndrome with age appropriate social interaction and communication skills with a new run of the highly popular ‘Developing Social Aptitude’ series of workshops in 2008.

Educational Support
DSA’s Children Services also plans to offer more support to children with Down syndrome through tuition /remedial programmes which will be offered during school holidays or after-school hours.

Looking into the future, DSA strives to serve as a link between schools, students and parents and will coordinate the programmes to ensure that its set objectives are met. It will also establish integration friendly environments through practical on-site recommendations and on-going consultation.

Research Study on the Inclusion of Children with Down syndrome in Mainstream Primary Schools
In 2007, DSA started a research project to study the inclusion of children with Down syndrome in mainstream primary schools.

DSA strongly believes that new efforts need to be invested in providing opportunities for students with Down syndrome to be included within mainstream schools in Singapore. In light of the successful inclusion of children with Down syndrome in many countries throughout the world, the evidence of which is documented in the international research literature, DSA believes that academic and social inclusion for children with Down syndrome are possible within mainstream schools, given the appropriate accommodations and supports.

As this possibility has yet to be explored through systematic research in Singapore, DSA hopes that this project will constitute the documentation of the development of a viable model of inclusion for the local context.

DSA hopes to present and publish findings from this study at upcoming conferences and seminars.