News

Results Tempus project 'Curriculum and skill development in vision rehabilitation'

 

From 2014 to September 2016 Bert Steenbergen en Mathijs Vervloed have cooperated in an EU financed Tempus project 'Curriculum and skill development in vision rehabilitation'. In this project physiotherapists, occupational therapists, optometrists and behavioural scientists from Jordan and Palestine were trained  in rehabitating children with visual and multiple disabilities. The European partners were from Aston University and Focus Birmingham UK, Royal Visio and Radboud University from the Netherlands and Eötvös Loránd University from Hungary. After a explaratory visit to Jordan and Palestine in 2014 in March 2014 Bert Steenbergen and Mathijs Vervloed have taught a corse on early intervetnion in August 2014. Until recently early intervention was as good as nonexistent in Jordan and Palestine. Rehabilitation for children is just starting and mostly offered in a centre based model in hospitals and rehabilitation centres. Several students were coached individually while the performed a home based early intervention with one family. In 2015 en 2016 two groups of student shave paid a visit to the Netherlands. They visited several locations of royal Visio and the Behavioural Science Institute of Radboud University. Mathijs Vervloed edited part of a manual on visual rehabilitation and gave three lectures in September 2016 during three different dissemination symposia organised by the partners in the Middle East in Bethlehem, Nablus en Amman. For us the main result is that, although on a limited scale, there is early intervention available for children with visual impairment in Bethlehem en Amman. For more information see: http://visionme.org/