G'day all.

I have been on this list for about a month and have got very caught up with
following the various discussions.  I'm not quite sure how I got on the
list, but I'm very glad I did.

I live in Dalby, Queensland, Australia and I am currently enrolled in a
course for Teacher Aides which is heavily geared to assisting students with
disabilities. I travel two evenings a week, round trips of 180 kilometres
each,  to attend the Southern Institute of TAFE in Toowoomba.  I am a very
mature age student.

I don't have CP but I am on a disability support pension. For the last 10
years I have been working in schools as an aide almost entirely on a
voluntary basis (nobody seems to want to employ me - but they don't mind
using my skills for free)  Many years ago I had a career in computers and I
teach computers to primary school children a couple of hours a week.

Anyway, I got on to this list when I was researching for an assignment. The
assignment was a presentation on a disability. I think I probably thought
that this list would be information about recent developments.

I found plenty of information on the Web about CP from a medical point of
view (causes, classification etc) but there were some things I couldn't
find, or perhaps I should say I found them but only from the side of the
doctors, teachers, etc. I  am talking about what it is like at school for a
child with cerebral palsy. One of the questions we had to answer was "the
effects of the impairment on learning". Oh there is plenty of stuff from
educators, therapists etc. but nothing much from the point of view of the
student. I read about Amber and her difficulties, and yeah, I was horrified
too that this kind of thing still goes on.

I worked with a little girl with cerebral palsy for two and a half years,
although I knew her from when she was a baby. It was in a very remote part
of Australia. (We shopped about once a school term).  I remember how
frustrating it was with the therapists, no matter how considerate they
tried to be (some didn't). Tasha couldn't speak and we had to beg, borrow
and steal computers for her so she could learn to read and write.  I wrote
a computer program that suited her needs and she was able to catch up to
the rest of the class.

So if anybody would like to tell me what it's like in school, say in the
last 5 years or if you are still at school or have a child at school, I
would be very grateful. The people I'll be talking to, and myself, will be
out there next year working with children and we need to get it right.  If
you had or have a person assisting you in school (we call them Teacher
Aides) did they do their job from your point of view?

May your god bless you all.

Love Pat.