“Just Like You” — Acceptance Program

As a growing number of individuals are being diagnosed with some form of disabilities, it is not surprising to hear about new developing programs aimed at increasing awareness and acceptance within public establishments. Interesting enough, these new programs are targeting the younger population and are aimed at acceptance within elementary schools.

In Sydney, Australia, a program called “Just like you”, which aimed at enhancing 5th graders’ knowledge, attitude and ultimately acceptance towards individuals with disabilities was implemented. Through interactive games, readings and lectures, children aged between 9 and 11 were educated about individuals with disabilities over an 8 months period (two 90 minutes sessions held every 1 to 2 weeks).

To test whether this pilot program was successful, the authors administered a baseline questionnaire to every child before the beginning of the program and then at the end of it to observe how their answered had varied. Furthermore, a selected few (24 out or the 147 participants) where given an additional opportunity to express what they had like and dislike about the program and how they would change it. According to the results of their assessment, the authors claimed that the “Just like you” program had a promising future in helping improve acceptance toward disabled individuals in older elementary school students. However, the evaluation of this program is lacking some key concepts and observations before it can truly be deemed “promising”.

It is a well known fact, that what one thinks and does can be completely different. As such, simply basing the success of the “Just like you” program on answers to a questionnaire (which mainly used the concept of Likert Scale) is insufficient. The children could simply have learned how to answer questions regarding disabilities. The program offers no real contacts with actual children with disabilities and as such there is a potential that all the theoretical material they have learned during the 8 months course period will never be physically applied. Exposure would have been a great way to see whether the children’s attitude and acceptance has truly been affected by the program.

In the end, awareness is the best road to acceptance! Programs such as “Just like you” should continue to be developed and implemented to young children, to at least expose them to the concept of disabilities and to early on, form a positive attitude towards it in order to ease the road to acceptance.

Reference:

Ison, N., McIntyre, S., Rothery, S., Smithers-Sheedy, H., Goldsmith, S., Parsonage, S., & Foy, L. (2010). ‘Just like you’: A disability awareness programme for children that enhanced
knowledge, attitudes and acceptance: Pilot study findings. Developmental Neurorehabilitation, 13(5), 360-368.