What We Do: 2. Rehabilitation Service for the Visually Impaired
2023. 4. 19
NewsJGDA's Rehabilitation Service for the Visually Impaired
To improve the quality of life of the visually impaired, JGDA actively conducts rehabilitation services for the visually impaired.
The four main services are:
Visual impairment Rehabilitation Consultation provides information to clients so they can receive necessary services.
Home Training mainly visits users at home and provides training such as gait training, Braille training, computer training, cooking, and keeping the house tidy.
Short-term Visual Impairment Rehabilitation.
"Wan! Pakukko Summer School", an overnight program for elementary school students attending special needs schools for the visually impaired and low vision classes.
Rehabilitaiton for students
A student cutting sausages to make yakisoba (fried noodles) during cooking class.
In addition to short-term rehabilitation for adults, the Sendai Training Center offers short-term rehabilitation for junior high school students. The intention was to create a basis for the Wan! Pakukko Summer School participants to connect with our association as a provider of the following grown-up rehabilitation.
However, the program has recently been open to those who have yet to attend Wan! Pakukko Summer School, and are new to our association.
As with adults, training programs include mobility, ICT (PC, iPhone, and other devices), activities of daily living (ADL), Braille, and guide dog trial walk, according to the participants' wishes based on preliminary interviews.
Two students, one with a long cane, walk to the lunch place in the city they have decided on.
In addition, as specialized content for junior high school students' rehabilitation, we offer recreations in which students decide on a lunch location and research the bus time to go there on their own. The program aims to deepen participant interaction while gathering information, making self-decisions, and confirming mobility skills. To help them build an image for the future, we also provide opportunities to listen to the stories of seniors who are a little older than the participants (e.g., how they went from being students to full-time workers).
More than 20 years have passed since the start of Wan! Pakukko summer school, we held a Wanpaku kids reunion the other day for the participants up to 2010. The reunion was held in a pleasant atmosphere, with participants reminiscing about their participation and reporting on their recent activities, including those who have established companies that offer a variety of businesses centred on consulting services related to universal design, those who have become junior high school teachers, and those who became the first guide dog users of the summer school.
JGDA will continue to provide guide dog mobility services and expand rehabilitation services for the visually impaired to support more people in achieving their goals for the future.