Handicapped Children Care

Around the world, there are more or less 150 million children that live under the shelter of disability and require our attention. The biggest concern is that no matter how the world has developed over the years, 80% of such handicapped children belong to mostly developed countries.

Inadequate resources of treatment for disabled children are another major concern that needs to be addressed at the earliest. They are the ones being discriminated against and are unable to receive top-class hospital services as compared to others.

Causes

A child can be handicapped because of various reasons, both parental or through any occurrence of an event. Most of the time, these can be avoided if proper treatment is provided on time.

Some of the incidents that impact the lives of children include poverty, genetic problems, malnutrition, disease (polio, for example), war (particularly through anti-personnel mines), and/or neglecting proper sanitary.

Issues Faced by Handicapped Children

It is important that handicapped children be provided proper attention and can get care if they are associated with occupational therapists. Parents alone cannot provide them with enough support, and thus, it is important to get help from professionals who may help children with issues such as communication, feeding, eating, sleeping, using the toilet, movability, and challenging behavior.

Feeding and Eating

There are various reasons why a handicapped child is facing problems related to eating. These physical problems include digesting, swallowing, chewing or sucking. Moreover, limited mobility might be a hurdle in swallowing food in some cases.

For this purpose, it is important that proper training must be given to the child. They can also be associated with a health visitor, dietitian or a speech-language therapist who can help them provide knowledge on how to develop skills.

Sleeping

A handicapped child can have problems related to quality sleep and thus the whole family can be affected because of it. Multiple reasons need to be addressed such as difficulty in breathing or muscle spasms as the case may be. If a child is faced with disabilities in learning, it will not be helpful to know when and why they need sleep.

Thus, a community nurse or a health visitor can play a pivotal role in addressing the needs of such children. If necessary, a psychologist or sleep specialist can also provide considerable support to these children. If they continue to face interruptions in sleep, they may also qualify for Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and constant care they may get a higher rate of DLA.

Toilet Training

Children learn to use a toilet when they are two to three years old, however, everyone is different from the other. Yet, in the case of most handicapped children, these signs are evident when they take the time to learn or grow older. The reasons for these may include muscle tone, motor skills, or impaired mobility. In most cases, some children are unable to learn to use a toilet for themselves entirely no matter how old they grow.

A psychotherapist or an occupational therapist can give helpful advice related to special toilet seats and how to maintain the mobility of such children. A child suffering from such issues as bedding protection, larger nappies, and pads. If unavailable, you can also buy these privately consulting your local health authority’s incontinence service.

Moveability

Like normal children, a handicapped child also wishes to move around freely, but they are unable to due to inaccessibility. A General Practitioner (GP) may refer such children to a physiotherapist who can identify their needs for mobility.

A community health service or local hospital can also loan mobility options such as adapted seating walking aides, buggies, and wheelchairs depending on the recommendation of the psychotherapist.

Challenging Behavior and Your Child

Children suffering from sensory or learning disabilities are commonly faced with challenging behavior. Handicapped children can have problems expressing their views such as what they like and dislike. Various forms of challenging behavior including aggression to withdrawal mostly found in handicapped children.

Whether anyone likes it or not, handicapped children are faced with discrimination all their lives. Whether in cultural life, education, transportation, and lodging, they do have to undergo numerous drawbacks. The infrastructure system in the entire world is not helpful for such children as the buildings cannot be accessed by those who cannot move without wheelchairs. When it comes to intuitional setup, the unavailability of professional interpreters of sign language is an obstacle for such children.

If the children are unable to make decisions, the parents must stand up and make decisions on their behalf. However, once they reach 18 years of age, parents have no right to make decisions on their behalf whether the child is handicapped or not.

Communicating with your child

Communication is an important aspect for everyone including handicapped children. However, in developed and underdeveloped countries, handicapped children are kept separately away from their parents which itself is a form of discrimination. They are kept away from other children of the family and can only meet their family once in a while. Hence, they are unable to merge with society and later unable to even find employment which is their birthright.

Handicapped children have little to no skills of communication for that purpose. He/she may require a sufficient amount of time to develop their speech and it becomes a worry whether the child may be able to communicate in future or not.

Thanks to the advancement of technology, there are various types of tools and techniques available for children to learn. A handicapped child may get significant help from a language and speech therapist who can tell what aides might be required for communication.