Paper presented at 4th World Congress on
Conductive Education
12 –
An appropriate strategy:
Introducing the Principles of Conductive Education to
Clare Cheng, SAHK
With over 60 million people with disabilities in
While the policy level is supportive the general public has little
awareness of disability and even less of the rehabilitation concept, and most crucial of all the severe lack of trained personnel to address
the problem across the full spectrum of children’s disability.
Few children with cerebral palsy attend school. Indeed, the majority of disabled
children are abandoned in orphanages or lying at home with no help. In the orphanages while there is care
and attention, there is no knowledge and understanding of disability problems,
or training on how to help the disabled children. The two Chinese words “殘疾” meaning “withered and sick” ascribed to
these children bear the strong connotation of “no cure, no hope”.
The change in attitude happened with the introduction of a one-year
certificate course in rehabilitation for Chinese doctors organized by the Hong
Kong Society for Rehabilitation in its capacity as WHO Collaborating Centre
Hong Kong Office. From 1989 to
1997, ten courses at national level were run in two medical universities in
Faced with this challenge and scarce resources, the service providers
were compelled to find an effective model to meet the challenge. Encouraged by the success of the
trans-disciplinary team experience based on the principles of conductive
education being practiced in
Graduates from the certificate courses were identified as suitable
target personnel to initiate the adoption of CE principles in their respective
orphanages. While doctors on the
whole were responsible for the overall program, nurses as frontline people were
the principal deliverers. The Jockey Club Conductive Learning Centre of the
Spastics Association of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Society for Rehabilitation
worked closely together in training these personnel. The training format consisted of
introductory courses together with on site teaching combining theory and practice,
in short, an apprenticeship style of learning. In the developing situation such as
This teaching and monitoring for more than 10 years
has helped building up a core group of practitioners who are committed to
developing the practice using CE principles. In truth, one can say, not only have the
children improved, but also the staff have undergone a
transformation in the way they look at disabled children. The humanistic aspect of Conductive
Education has enabled the staff to appreciate the quality of the children
beyond their pathological signs and symptoms. Working together with the children in
all aspects of living, “from sitting on the pot to learning ABC”, the staff
have fostered a genuine loving relationship with the children. The trust built
up is expressed in a manner in which they challenge the children in a spiral of
demanding tasks, like climbing down a long flight of stairs from the
dormitories to the dinning hall for lunch.
This change in attitude is also evidenced in some administrators of
orphanages. They begin to
appreciate the service given to the children is not a matter of charity but the
right of these children whom they now see as human beings. They further recognize there is more
than basic care they can offer.
Recently, the director of an orphanage who now runs a successful program
under the principles of CE admitted to us that it was the early nineties before
she learnt disabled children could benefit from training.
To underscore this change of attitude, one orphanage has taken the bold
step of including mild and moderately disabled children in the recently
established foster program initiated by the government. The pioneering foster project seeks to
place children from the orphanage in suitable homes in the farming community in
the countryside. The director aims
at placing two or three children with one disabled in any one family. The staff of the orphanage visit the families and conduct parent
workshops to demonstrate the basic skills in helping their fostered disabled
children. Their experience in
teaching the children in the orphanage has given them the courage and
confidence to implement this outreach program. This effort will undoubtedly have far
reaching effects on attitude towards the disabled in the wider community.
To sum up, for ten years now, seeds for implementing the system of CE
have been sown in orphanages and rehabilitation centres
in many parts of