For more than 10 months, tutors have been helping children with special needs in five regions

Since January 2021, in 5 regions of Russia, with the support of the Presidential Grants Foundation, the project "Governor of a special child" is being implemented.

The project involves the development of a system of social and pedagogical assistance at home: the provision of a nanny-defectologist service at home, which, on the one hand, gives the parents of a child with a severe disability the opportunity to relax, on the other hand, it deals with the correction and development of the child's independence skills. Twenty families from Moscow, 15 families from the Trans-Baikal Territory and the Nizhny Novgorod Region, and 10 families from the Novgorod and Sverdlovsk regions each receive a monthly assistance from a nanny-defectologist in the amount of 8 hours a week.

The recipients of the service are families raising children with complex developmental disabilities not only from regional centers, but also from settlements remote from large cities. The almost one year period of receiving the service allowed parents of children with special needs to assess the effectiveness of the service, feel its impact on the life of the family and analyze the degree of demand from the target groups.

In their reviews of the work of tutors, parents pay attention to two main aspects: the benefits for the child and their own well-being, which has improved with the help of specialists at home. Parents note the focus of the work of nannies-defectologists on the formation of social and household skills of children, including self-service at home, on the development of public transport, communication with classmates and children on the site.

The governors help with homework and reinforce the knowledge learned in the classroom. During the work of specialists, parents have the opportunity to leave the house in order to solve their affairs: as a rule, mothers of special children devote their free time to self-education, playing sports and visiting stores (there is less information about dads in the reviews).

At the first stages of the tutors' work, in accordance with the recommendations of the curators, an assessment of the functional capabilities of children was carried out to determine the tactics of working with each child individually. The assessment was carried out on the basis of a questionnaire that was developed specifically for the project. A specialist in the development of a technological model of home-based services analyzed the completed questionnaires, and identified 4 groups of children with different developmental programs.

Children and adolescents are conventionally divided into those who have a single developmental disorder and those who have multiple developmental disorders. A single violation is a violation of any one function of the body. For example, visual impairment - total blindness or impaired behavior and communication due to the presence of autism spectrum disorders. The most common single disorder is severe movement disorders (cerebral palsy).

Tatyana Yamshchikova, mother of the ward Roman, reports: “Yulia Aleksandrovna Bondarchuk is a qualified teacher. Yulia very quickly was able to adapt to understanding the needs and requirements of Roma. I could safely leave them alone and go to the store or the MFC, not worrying about how things are at home. Classes with a tutor aroused a lot of positive emotions in my son and allowed him to feel completely differently: enriching his sensory experience, as well as the experience of communication and interaction."