Diagnostic Center — Multipurpose Rehabilitation and Professional Training Center — Supported Work Program — Via Costa Alta — 31015 Conegliano Veneto (TV) — Tel. 0438/31542 — Associazione «La Nostra Famiglia» - Website: lanostrafamiglia.it - Contact
To truly understand a working center like this one in Conegliano, you would need to spend time there. A brief visit is like looking at a mosaic — small pieces arranged together: children's faces, fragments of conversation, objects the young people have made, equipment, corners of buildings, machines, photographs, therapists at work. But at Conegliano, each piece of the mosaic is vivid. They shine with life and offer our eyes a picture of extraordinary beauty.
One of the social workers who welcomed us gave the whole scene its meaning. She greeted us warmly, explained what we were seeing with patience and detail, and led us through classrooms, corridors, and workshops to meet the children and young people who — you see it at once — matter profoundly to her and to everyone on staff.
Rather than long speeches, we want to show you this center through brief descriptions and photographs, and give you the desire to know it and learn from it.
What Makes It Special
The center serves two health districts covering towns, rural areas, and industrial zones. It welcomes children and young people ages 3 to 20 with disabilities of every kind and degree:
- 180 day students, 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.
- 28 residential students for family reasons
- 450 outpatients receiving one or more therapies: some preschoolers in the morning; others integrated into neighborhood schools in the morning and using the center in the afternoon
The kindergarten also welcomes non-disabled children from the neighborhood and children of staff members — an original and valuable form of integration.
The system is remarkably flexible. A child can leave the center at any time to attend a neighborhood school if that serves him better, and return later if needed. These decisions are made together with each family, as are all other decisions about care. Families whose children attend the center belong to a parents' association that helps members support one another.
The center works in partnership with the health districts. Transportation, for example, is arranged and managed by district buses and drivers.
The pediatric neuropsychiatrist, six psychologists, and four social workers are employed full-time. Beyond following children at the center for diagnosis and rehabilitation planning, the doctor systematically examines all newborns at Conegliano Hospital. This means any abnormality or difficulty is found early, and the child receives specialized intervention without delay.
The precision of diagnosis and sound prognosis depend on coordination among the center's different services and on a comprehensive educational vision that ensures seriousness and results.
The doctor also carries out scientific research on types and rates of disability in the region, to support prevention.
In the classrooms, the children's open smiles impress visitors, but so do the teachers' warmth (50 in all, every one tenured), and the abundance and quality of teaching materials. What struck us most was the teachers' spirit of initiative and research — their effort to meet each child's real needs within his or her genuine abilities. Children are grouped by age, difficulty level, and capacity, to bring out the best in each one. In one class of six, the week's goal was learning to make a phone call home alone. The phone number is written in large letters and taped to the desk. The teacher shows us a training phone: the children practice dialing while the teacher in the next room picks up, confirms the number is correct, and says the parent will answer soon.
See also "Nostra Famiglia and Disability"
The indoor pool serves not only motor and psychomotor rehabilitation but also allows young people — despite grave disability — to know joy in their own bodies. As we passed through, a young man who walks with severe difficulty was getting out of the water. He had already had two brain tumors removed. Movement in water is a moment of happiness for him. Another boy, playing ball with an instructor in the water, has psychotic behavior.
The therapeutic equipment is impressive.
The center offers motor rehabilitation, psychomotor therapy, speech therapy, vision training for the partially sighted, neuropsychological treatment, and psychotherapy.
Staff use the equipment with great skill and tireless effort to ensure every child reaches maximum independence and personal progress.
Each child has an individualized work plan. Remember: the center serves people with every type of disability and every degree of severity. This demands genuine versatility and intense attention to each person.
At Nostra Famiglia centers, occupational therapy aims to
- give autonomy to children with grave functional loss (staff find or invent tools and adaptations to standard equipment so children can perform essential movements)
- develop hand skills and manual expression. The photograph shows an occupational therapy workshop where each person creates beautiful, useful objects by hand. In this unit, as in all others, the aesthetic quality of the finished product struck us — not just pleasant to see, but a sign of honor and respect for the person with disability.
To learn more about this glimpse of one of many programs run by this association, we recommend reading Nostra Famiglia and Disability, which explains the «philosophy» guiding the association's work and making such remarkable results possible. It is written by the association's president, Dr. Zaira Spreafico, and appeared in the May 1986 Newsletter. Her words say what we hope will become the philosophy of all who work in the field of disability.
The ability to communicate is a basic human need. Highly trained, deeply committed staff dedicate themselves to it. They correct verbal communication disorders of every kind, and when speech is impossible, they offer alternative languages.
As in other departments, materials are rich and plentiful: keyboards of many types, with personalized adaptations, allow each spastic person to express himself or herself through machines or computers.
In a nearby building is the vocational training school.
Different workshops in weaving, ceramics, wicker, mosaics, and woodworking aim at
teaching real skills and developing the whole person.
«This formation concerns learning and acquiring values, norms, behavior, motivation, attitudes, knowledge, and ability.» The order of that list struck us as deeply true — values and attitudes come before knowledge and ability. The greatest skills mean nothing without appropriate behavior or motivation. One young man with very limited motor capacity produces real work. A young woman with similar disability found employment at a ceramics company.
In the vocational school, we admired an enormous woodworking shop. The machines are numerous and professional-grade. We noticed meticulous attention to adapting equipment so each person can use it safely and effectively, and become a real worker despite disability. The products are high quality. These results come from gradual, systematic exercises that show remarkable teaching. We saw workbooks where the progression — growing precision and complexity — was planned by the instructor and executed by the student with discipline and persistence. Success does not happen by chance. It is the fruit of great labor to honor the person and to make possible what is possible.
«When the young person with difficulty is guided with great tenderness and great love to see himself as a person beloved by the Father in heaven, with his own place in God's people, journeying with others toward the making of the world, then we shall see unexpected depths flower in him — gestures of goodness, surges of generosity» (Newsletter, p. 27).
Religious formation places great importance on theatrical performance and mime (based on Scripture texts). Here too, diligence and careful attention to detail allow young people to perform in public presentations that win applause and witness to a genuine gospel search.
- Nicole Schulthes, 1990