Guidelines for the AIPD intervention
1. To help understand what has happened.
Sometimes what is imagined is far worse than reality.
There are still problems in the way doctors communicate a diagnosis of Down’s syndrome to parents after the birth of such a child, and often they do not help parents to understand who that child is that is different from the one that was expected, but only who the child is not.
2. To acknowledge the child regardless of his or her handicap and to respect him or her in their entirety.
There is a risk of reading every kind of behaviour and every difficulty only as a Down’s symptom and not truly know the child you have in front of you.
3. To learn to observe the child’s growth, to trust the child and to boost his or her potential.
In that sense we give great importance to the development of autonomy whereby people with Down’s syndrome have the possibility of obtaining excellent results. We generally ask parents to take on the role of attentive parents as protagonists, not as therapists or teachers, offering their children suitable motivations, not too many nor too little.
4. To navigate many options.
Above all, during the first years, parents are confused by the many options that are offered by care centres and therapies and they need adequate information.
5. To promote health checks-ups.
We know that children with Down’s syndrome incur greater health risks than other children. Appropriate preventive medicine can avoid overlapping additional handicaps.
6. To know and use government structures.
The right to good health, education, welfare and work must find an answer in government structures. The right to health, education, welfare and work must be catered for by government structures and families need guidance in how to use the available structures properly.
7. To be aware of, know and defend one’s rights.
To acquaint families with the current laws and with the procedures necessary to obtain what is legally due also means that the parents are better able to act and interact with institutions.
8. To promote school, work and social placement supporting the principle of inclusion.
9. Support in times of crisis
There are shared moments (birth, the beginning of school, the end of compulsory schooling, etc.) and individual ones when it is useful to activate specific interventions also using reciprocal support between parents.
10. To acknowledge the difference between each case history.
To respect and sustain the need for assistance of people in greater need by identifying appropriate responses and promoting the quality of their lives
11. To promote the role and the autonomy of people with Down’s syndrome and that of their families.
The choice of services and the procedures needed to benefit from them acknowledges and promotes an active role – not one of simple users – for children and their parents.
12. To help people with a Down syndrome to grow up and become adults.
Faced with the growth of the adult population it is necessary to identify and provide room for the expression of their new needs and to stimulate the implementation of appropriate answers to those new needs with regard to rights and services.
13. To stimulate awareness in society as a whole towards acceptance and valorisation of the people with Down’s syndrome.
It is necessary to promote solidarity towards each kind of diversity and at the same time allow everybody to grow reciprocally.
14. To support study and research