C Johnston¹, H Lunn², R Flavel¹
¹University of Sydney, Family and Community Nursing, Sydney, Australia; ²Royal Blind Society, Child and Family Services, Sydney, Australia
Background
The Vision and Living Skills Project, a collaboration of Royal Blind Society and The University of Sydney, Australia, was designed to determine which children with vision impairment are most at risk
of experiencing difficulties in learning daily living skills, and then trial family-responsive, innovative teaching and support strategies to assist in their acquisition.
Method
Key child and family characteristics have been examined both quantitatively and qualitatively by (1) screening a group of 220 children and adolescents with VI, aged 3 to 18 years, living in both urban
and rural areas, for level of vision impairment, cognitive ability (those with a severe delay were excluded) and personal living skills status; and (2) interviewing families of 25 blind children from this
sample, using an ecocultural instrument; obtaining parental ratings of their children's personal attributes; and measuring the children's self-concept.
Results
Results from the larger sample indicated a highly statistically significant overall effect (p<0.0001) for cognitive ability on the development of independent living skills and a lesser, but significant
(p=0.01) effect for level of vision. Gender was not a significant variable, nor were there significant multivariate effects between vision, intellectual ability and gender. Important variables that emerged
from (2) were current relative priority ascribed by families to independent self-care, complexity of time demands, parental expectations of child contribution to domestic activities, children's determination,
confidence and self-motivation, and family members' skills in using a range of strategies to support learning.
Conclusion
As a result of the data obtained, a teaching package has been produced and is being trialled with families and generic professionals.
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