Program Spotlight

In Inclusion Programs: Kids Teach Kids That Everyone Is Special

Children understand that words can sting and wound. They know that it hurts to be left out. When it’s time for games, most kids enjoy the fun and spirit of group play where everyone joins in.

In 2000, the Miami-Dade County Park and Recreation Department, formalized its Inclusion Initiative. Today 10,000 children and youth attend the department’s summer camps and after-school programs held at 42 sites around the county. Of these, about 250 are children with disabilities, according to Lucy Binhack, Disabilities Services manager for the department.

In inclusion settings, children with disabilities play and learn together with typically functioning children.

“The kids create accommodations for each other,” says Binhack, explaining that often, in an inclusion setting, when Timmy can’t pick up a little crayon, his peers will get a fat crayon for him. Or they’ll just decide that “it’s more fun if we play this game with Timmy.” While adult leaders might struggle to make a game fair for both sets of children, the kids themselves will suggest a solution, maybe changing or bending the rules so that Timmy and other children with disabilities can play.

Last year, 40-50 of the 250 children had disabilities severe enough to require special accommodation. Yet most situations had to do with behavioral issues, and these were handled by developing a plan with the parent, child and program supervisors. As a result, more and more parents of children with special needs are taking advantage of inclusion programs.  

“The inclusion programs respect the family,” says Binhack, who’s been with the department since 1993. “If the child doesn’t need a program designed specifically for children with disabilities, then we want them to go to an inclusion program – they’re going there with their friends and neighbors, and parents can drop them off at the same site with their siblings. It’s much better for the family.”

Leadership is the key to making inclusion programs work, and the county offers five trainings as part of its program for employees. Trainings sensitize supervisors to the needs of children with disabilities and also ensure that, as much as possible, every child is treated the same so that each has the best possible experience in the program.

“We want to make sure we don’t overprotect kids. We use language to serve the child first and accommodate their disability second,” says Binhack, who adds that, as a county agency, the department endorses “People First” language.

“The terminology is more respectful. Our language denotes our attitude and intentions; when we use person first language, we’re reminding everyone to look at the child first and the disability second.”

In early 2009, several local advocacy groups formed a Community Inclusion Committee to promote a “People First Language” campaign that raises awareness and rejects the stigmatizing of children with disabilities. 

“For a very long time, we’ve been fighting the use of ‘retard’ and ‘mental retardation’ or the reference to someone as ‘an autistic child.’ This happens everywhere and at all levels. There’s been so much discrimination with labels,” says Isabel Garcia, executive director of Parent to Parent Miami. “These are people first.”

Garcia is a firm believer that both groups of children benefit and learn from their interaction in an inclusion setting.   

“Typically functioning children learn that being different is okay. They learn compassion and knowing that competing doesn’t mean you always have to win – it’s just part of the experience,” Garcia says. “The exchange also prepares them for the future – for the possibility that anyone of them could become the parent of a child with special needs.”

Phillip A. Collazo is the training coordinator for All Children Together (ACT), a resource of CCDH, the agency that advocates, coordinates and provides supports and services for people with disabilities in Miami-Dade County. ACT is funded by The Children’s Trust to promote inclusion in its many after-school and summer programs.    

Approximately one in 10 children is considered a child with a disability, meaning they have a formal diagnosis, Collazo says, citing national statistics. For every group of 20 children, that means two or three will be children with special needs.

The interaction and learning benefit the 17 or 18 in the group who are typically functioning children.

“We live in such a diverse community, and what a great way of increasing acceptance and diversity and getting kids to think about the whole community and the Golden Rule,” Collazo says. “Morally and ethically, it builds acceptance and self-confidence – it’s great to have children teaching other children.”

In 2008, The Children’s Trust served more than 5,000 children and youths with disabilities at a cost of $11 million; additional Trust funding supported the hundreds of out-of-school programs that promote an inclusion setting. 

To know more about the “People First Language” campaign, contact Parent to Parent of Miami at (305) 271-9797.

For information about Miami-Dade County’s Park and Recreation Department Inclusion Initiative, contact (305) 365-3128 or visit: http://www.miamidade.gov/parks/fun-leisure-access.asp

Written by Michael R. Malone