EARLY INTERVENTION: PREVENTION AND CHALLENGES IN THE EARLY CHILDHOOD

Abstract

On the 29.08.2011, at the Faculty of Philosophy was held a successful seminar with the topic "Early intervention: prevention and challenges in the early childhood", a subject that nowadays attracts great interest. The seminar had a goal to achieve better life quality for families. It was followed with great pleasure and attention by a large number of participants, who were directly or indirectly involved in the early intervention. Leading and experienced professionals from Austria, Germany and Macedonia held presentations which created atmosphere for open discussion and dialog. This resulted with many shared experiences and opinions for improvement of this issue in our country.   
The introduction was brought by Prof. Dr. Lena Damovska, a full time professor at the Institute of Pedagogy. Afterwards, Prof. Dr. Manfred Pretis showed gratitude to the guests for their attendance and emphasized his great pleasure for the realization of this scientific gathering and the diligence of the participants to this subject. At the end of introductory part the main organizer of the seminar, Prof. Dr. Vladimir Trajkovski, welcomed the audience and thanked the guest speakers for their impeccable motivation and desire in their unselfish expansion of knowledge among the attendees. The first lecture was presented by Prof. Dr. Manfred Pretis, a professor for trans-disciplinary early childhood intervention at the Faculty of Medicine in Hamburg, Germany. In his presentation, “Family before everything else: common collaboration with parents”, he emphasized the crucial need for parents involvement in their child’s development. This engagement leads to creation of environment that will represent “window of opportunity”, filed were practical stimulation will dominate as most important element in the early intervention. Accent was placed on the need of creating confidential interaction and communication between the parents and the professional team, in order to form a collaborative partnership that results with positive outcomes. By his own experience he explained that in the developed countries there are many different programs for early intervention from which parents can choose the most appropriate one. While in Macedonia unfortunately this is still an unfulfilled need.      
The following presentation was given by Prof. Dr. Zons Armin, a professor for special education at the University for Applied Sciences in Harthausen. His lecture was titled as “Legal basis for early child intervention: What kind of collaboration is necessary for us”. He gave a description of the legislations in Germany and some outcomes from Kiggs’s research. He also presented the laws for performance of rehabilitation and the centers that are responsible for the implementation of early intervention. He noted that there are centers for early help that are family centered aiming for better insight and work with the child, involved interdisciplinary team and manly pedagogical focus.
At the end of the first part in this seminar, a presentation was given by Prof. Dr. Annette Hartung, a professor for early childhood intervention. She discussed the “Family focus in practice”, presenting a real practical examples from the everyday life, which she experienced during the application of early intervention. She emphasized that the family as one unit always needs to be seen as a whole, where higher stimulations need to be present for the use of different services, using the ones that are most relevant for their better function.
The first presentation in the second part of the scientific gathering was given by Prof. Dr. Lena Damovska on the topic “To what extend are being inclusive the EIC services in Macedonia”. This subject once more expressed the need of these services in Macedonia, very important domain in the early prevention and intervention during the education. The early intervention in our country is still at the beginning or on unsatisfactory level. First of all, the parents as primary care givers deny they have problem causing difficulties when the intervention is applied in the letter developmental period. Her experience agreed with the views of the attendees, meaning that the implementation of the inclusive services in our county is still on a level of “baby steps”. This means that Macedonia has the need of professionals-special educators in the field of education. The deficiency of staff, as well as the insufficient knowledge of the parents indicates that our country has a lot to do in order to reach realistic and sufficient results. 
Further statement was given by Dr. Aleksandra Dimova, expert in early intervention for vulnerable children in the context of mental disorders among their parents, who at the moment works as a psychiatrist in Austria. Her presentation had the topic “New target groups in the EIC: children of mentally vulnerable parents”.  She emphasized that children who live with parent/s that have some psychiatric disorder are at a risk and are target groups for initiation of early interventional process. She presented this alarming condition which needs immediate resolution in order to create place and time for early prevention.  The need for a team to work seriously with this riskier by the day group of young individuals and the need of creation and the maintenance of healthy and normal developmental environment was emphasized. Real barriers that professionals are facing with this group of parents were shown, taking into consideration that the necessary help is achieved with great difficulty. In order to reduce these obstacles, an earlier preventive action is important to be started.
Prof. Dr.Vladimir Trajkovski, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor at the Institute of Special Education and Rehabilitation in Skopje gave the final presentation. He discussed the topic “Early childhood intervention of children with Autism”, giving various reviews of early intervention of children with pervasive developmental disorder Autism, a disorder that has unfortunately increase in Macedonia. He presented the services of early intervention that are important for the children with autistic spectrum disorders which are responsible for additional financial pressure within the family, as well as the achievement of some better quality. Trough his presentation, he emphasized the comprehensive programs such as the TEACCH program that aims to obtain communication, perception, imitation, social and motor skills. The Denver model was mentioned as a developmental approach based on the comprehensive ABA program which contains procedures for identification of the reasons that influence the behavioral swings. The early intervention is provided by a team obtaining continuous parental collaboration and strategies for solving problems in the behavior and intensive work with the child.
At the very end of this seminar, discussion was initiated, where the attendees were asked to share opinions and examples for early intervention and the principles in other countries, or their suggestions for improvement in any professional field that handles this issue. Indeed, this scientific gathering attracted the attention of many visitors that took active parts aiming to achieve some results that will not stay only verbal, but create basis for practical use in their work. One more time was proven that there is an interest for knowledge improvement and even the public holidays were not an obstacle for professional upgrading.