Christchurch programme helps at-risk children learn

Working in partnership with Linwood Avenue, Shirley Primary, Gilberthorpe School and Rāwhiti School, CSS has been delivering professional learning assessments to tamariki, identified by their schools as most needing them. These are children who would otherwise simply wait and fall further behind, and perhaps never fully understand why learning feels so hard.

The CSS Learning Assessment Pilot Programme has been made possible through the generous support of the Rātā Foundation.

The outcomes have been striking. Throughout the case studies captured in a CSS report to the Rātā Foundation, consistent and meaningful change has been seen.

Parents have shared that they themselves struggled at school, and now understanding how their child’s brain works, and having language for what they had observed for years, made them reflect on their own experience.

The programme is potentially interrupting a pattern that has repeated across decades and generations. This is the pattern of children who learn differently being left to struggle, to disengage, to carry the quiet wound of believing they simply are not clever enough.

“It does not wait for families to find their way to a private clinic. It does not require parents to know the system, to have transport, to take time off work. It goes to where the children already are and it says: you are worth understanding. Your child is worth understanding,” said CSS manager Luis Arevalo.

“For many of the whānau we serve, the barriers to accessing specialist support for their children are not just financial, though the cost of a private educational psychology assessment can be prohibitive. They are also logistical, cultural and relational. A service that comes to the child, in the place to which the child belongs, changes everything about what is possible.”

FULL STORY

Inform-149 (Inform/Catholic Diocese of Christchurch)