On 9-10 November, a seminar on rehabilitation, teaching and communication practices in relation to deaf-blind people took place at the Secondary Boarding School of Strazdumuiza in Latvia.
The seminar was led by Bente Ramsing Özgür from the Nordic Centre for Welfare and Social Issues (NVC), Denmark, who has accumulated ample experience in this field.
Similar seminars were organised in Riga in June, addressing rehabilitation specialists from the Latvian Society of the Blind and the Latvian Association of the Deaf, as well as the teachers working with eyesight- and hearing-impaired children.In Latvia, people with such a difficult combination of disability have utterly limited opportunities for rehabilitation and education. Even the competence of social work and education specialists is insufficient, as in the society’s overall knowledge of how to communicate and work with such people.
In order to comprehend the situation and try to improve it, the Nordic Centre for Welfare and Social Issues has throughout 2009 been organising seminars and information campaigns in the Baltic countries.