Dear Sir,

 

I write as a parent of a child who attends Loughan Special School in Ballymena to express the general distress caused by the moves in the North Eastern Education and Library Board to enable the possible amalgamation of Loughan Special School with the other local teaching centres of Beechgrove and Dunfane.

 

The school at Loughan has, over the years, developed as a centre of excellence to provide a unique range of structured education for those children with severe or profound multiple learning difficulties  (SLD / PMLD). This includes attention to:-

 

·        The pupils’ physical needs.

·        Personal care such as life skills, toileting etc.

·        Individual educational needs with customised curricula for SLD.

·        Medical / Health issues.

·        Extreme challenging behaviour.

·        Specialist areas such as Autism and PMLD.

·        On-demand facilities like the sensory rooms for calming / stimulating pupils.

 

Loughan Special School is probably in scheduled for a re-build but it cannot be emphasised too much that Loughan is very much more than a mere building. Its relative smallness reinforces its ethos of complete and total support for every pupil which also enhances the morale of the related hard-pressed parents. Indeed the staff team which includes the principal through to the caretaker and the bus drivers know the children and can communicate with or about any of them!

 

With some PMLD children having a shortened life expectancy, the caring component of the staff is regularly challenged and never fails. This care element is also demonstrated daily in all the minor trauma situations. For parents and guardians it proves often to be the difference between sanity and insanity for them as they constantly cope with the stress, depression, anxiety  and fears for their special child’s future.

 

SLD / PMLD children at Loughan are not as ‘streetwise’ as children who are catered for at the Dunfane school. Most are very innocent / naïve people and many exhibit challenging behaviour such as:-

·        Not able to bear clothes touching their skin and thereby suddenly deciding to remove them all even in public.

·        Having to wear nappies etc. even sometimes up to 18 years of age.

·        Throwing school-bags, chairs, equipment etc. around the place.

·        Lying down and screaming through personal frustration.

·        Hurting and biting themselves and others.

 

The staff has evolved a great system of coping admirably with the above and do a remarkable job in promoting the basic dignity of the children as human beings. The Autistic Group of children there can have severe difficulties in coping with crowds or even loud noises like a bell ringing. Teachers create a structured environment with managed routines to cater for these traits and seamlessly avoid stress on all concerned. In an amalgamated situation, where SLD and MLD (Multiple Learning Difficulty) children would be in the one building, I believe that there would be such demand from more pupils and staff for any special facilities that ultimately their effectiveness under the present system of micro-management would be critically diminished.

 

Parents have the confidence that their children in Loughan are so closely cared-for that it is unlikely that they could ‘run off’. Their relative naivety makes most of them vulnerable to strangers and consequent bullying, abuse or worse. In an amalgamated environment it is hard to see how this confident supervision could be maintained.

 

Children typically go here from Primary School age right through to 18 years. The system is uniquely superb in that these disadvantaged human beings have the best possible access to an adaptable regime that will chart their progress, however limited, in line with the ethos of Loughan Special School.

 

In conclusion I would draw your attention to the fact that nowhere else in Northern Ireland do MLD and SLD children share the same school.  I trust that you will be able to take time to think about this short submission and perhaps arrange a visit to the school to see for yourself, first-hand, what goes on there Monday to Friday, virtually unseen.

 

Yours faithfully

 

 

John Junkin