Spain: InFo Autismo Centre Salamanca

 Readingtime: 6 minutes

‘You have to start at the beginning'.

 

 

 

 

Salamanca, it is the place where Spain and the United Nations organised a world congress on Special Needs in Education in 1994. The previous ten years had been declared The Decade of the Disabled by the United Nations.

 

The result of the Salamanca Congress was an almost utopian idea of the inclusive school where all children learn together.

It was a call to all governments, policy makers and professionals to work towards a different kind of education.

 

‘A child-centred pedagogy can help to avoid the waste of resources and the shattering of hopes that is all too frequently a consequence of poor quality instruction and a "one size fits all" mentality towards education. Child-centred schools are, moreover, the training ground for a people-oriented society that respects both the differences and the dignity of all human beings'.

 

No more special classes or schools. All children together at school was the message. Education focused on individual needs and interests.

 

It is exactly 28 years later that I am allowed to visit the University of Salamanca, at the InFoAutismo Center ((Investigación y Formación en Autismo, Research and Training in Autism). I am going to meet Professor Ricardo Canal-Bedia, from the Department of Personality, Assessment and Psychological Treatment, who was kind enough to invite me.

 

 

In this center, students can do research for a Master's degree or a PhD. But children and parents also come here for diagnosis, treatment and advice. It reminds me of the department at Leiden University, the Ambulatorium where Cato and I once went because she was refused proper care. Thanks to a report from this institute and legal proceedings, Cato finally did qualify for the Long-Term Care Act.

 

It is a hot day. In the university building, mouth masks must be worn because care is also provided there. That is a bit of a challenge. Professor Canal, Ricardo meets me in the hall. He suggests that we first take a walk around the various departments.

 

Through a large window I look into a room where a boy is sitting at a table opposite two ladies. They do not see me, but a mirror. The boy rubs his arms along his body and over his head. One of the ladies leans forward to catch the boy's attention. ‘This is an assessment,' explains Ricardo. I know. After all, it's the same in the Netherlands. A child confronted by two ladies who want to know things the child doesn't want to share. He doesn't look very happy. I think I know what he's feeling, because I also feel it involuntarily. The tension, the resistance. I have so often had to drag my children to such sessions. ‘It's better if we test her IQ again.’ Or something else. Looking for an explanation, for a solution. Why is this child not succeeding at school?

 

Not long ago, my now thirty-year-old son had a violent emotional outburst about exactly these kinds of sessions. How awful he had always found them. ‘Those rooms and those people and then those conversations over your head, as if you aren’t there!’ I see this child and his discomfort and I think of Wessel. Poor boy.

 

Research is needed, certainly. This kind of research gives our children with autism a kind of recognition. In the Netherlands, for a while that meant that your child could not be expelled from school, but since the introduction of the Act on Appropriate Education, just the opposite is happening. Schools keep their doors closed. They know they cannot meet the demands of the (Dutch) government: 'Make it appropriate and make sure everyone passes the exams!’

And so, the unwillingness of the schools only hardens. After all, they are not magicians. Twenty thousand children are not going to school in our small but rich country. Maybe even more. The compulsory education association published figures but whether they are reliable is questionable. Only a third of the municipalities thought it necessary to submit figures.

 

Ricardo opens another door. In this room, a researcher is conducting research into early recognition for very small children. He is going to find out whether it is possible to detect abnormalities in the processing of stimuli in the brain at an early stage, between 6 and 36 months. I wonder aloud how you find suitable children for this, as autism only presents itself in the second year of life. It is difficult, agrees the student. There is a headgear with electrodes on the table next to a computer screen that shows the child the stimuli.

 

Cato was a special baby, but I didn't realise that until much later. I was questioned endlessly when I came into care with her: what was baby time like? When did she sleep through the night? Was she potty-trained quickly? Cato was a beautiful baby, she was smart and alert and started talking early and then suddenly it was over. She was 14, 15 months. Everything stopped. No more talking, no more sleeping, no more eating, no more anything. No more walking, no more in the high chair, no more in the pram... Every night we were sitting up with her. She didn't take any afternoon naps either. She made twenty hours a day. I was pregnant with her little brother. Pieter and I relieved each other at night but it still exhausted us. She was always busy and never sick. Where did she get all that energy from? What goes on in a head like that? I remember having the feeling that something had been cut somewhere. If we only knew what happens then? Would we be able to help the child? Where does this student find the babies that will develop this kind of disorder. Ricardo explains later: ‘The babies who come to our research center are premature babies who are at high risk for neurodevelopmental disorder and thanks to follow-up actions like the one we carry out here we are able to anticipate and detect the signs before the critical problem occurs and we can put in place supportive measures to improve the personal and social future of these babies when they grow up and go to school. It means a great relief for the baby and his family.’

 

A doctoral student from the Dominican Republic has as her thesis project the adaptation of the Autism Spectrum Quotient for Spanish schools. This is a questionnaire invented in 2001 by a Cambridge professor as a means of determining the degree of autism in someone of normal to high intelligence.

 

In another room we meet not the student Ricardo had expected, but a researcher who originally came from Poland. I already mentioned her in my blog about La Garriga. Of course, I couldn't resist asking her about school drop-outs in Spain. She could not imagine it. In Spain, they will always want to keep all the children together,' she said. And she made an embracing gesture.

After the tour, there is still some time left to talk. Of course, I ask Ricardo if he is convinced that Spain has no school drop outs.

‘No,' he says, 'because that is against the law. All children have to go to school in Spain.’

 

In the Netherlands too, but that does not prevent young children from sitting at home for years. Ricardo looks at me in bewilderment. In Spain something like that wouldn't be possible.

 

I ask him what he thinks of inclusive education. ‘School is ultimately the best option for these children,' he says. Precisely because of the structure it offers. ‘But you have to start at the beginning. At a very young age.’

‘There are a number of organisations working very well here,' he says. ‘Will you be visiting San Sebastian?’

Yes, that is on my route.

‘I will call someone for you.’ And he puts his money where his mouth is.

 

Back in the appartment in the beautiful old town of Salamanca, I look up the organization Gautena on the internet. This organisation in San Sebastian has also been around for a long time. Since 1978. Back then, Gautena's activities were aimed at a life-long approach.  I am going to ask them if they can continue to exist, despite of the modern pragmatic society full of rules.

 

But first we go to Portugal, Cato and I, to visit a very nice lady and, just on the other side of that border, a very nice school with an eighty-year-old headmistress. Two women, one young, the other old (although you wouldn't say so) with the same passion and energy, on either side of a border.