TEACHCVI 

The aim of the partnership is to create collaborative tools for teachers and health care professionals. To build a bridge between the teacher/educator and a health care professionals so they can work together to benefit the target group; children with cerebral visual impairment, herby referred to as CVI.

Aims of the project:

• Making a tool for health care professionals and educators to screen for CVI.

• Creating a common database of tools for CVI detection.

• Producing resources for teachers to support their work in the assessment of CVI.

• Making teaching methodologies to enable the child’s access to literacy, this includes training and teaching materials for teachers/educators of children with cerebral visual impairment.    

In essence, CVI results from damage to the brain and since more than 40 per cent of the brain is estimated to be devoted to visual function it is hardly surprising that brain damage, arising from a number of etiologies, can often negatively impact on a child's ability to carry out visual tasks and thus to learn. As the child eyes are often intact and the problem of CVI relates to the higher visual functions of interpretation and understanding rather than to the physical structure of the eye itself, CVI is often underdiagnosed.

CVI can present poor color and object recognition, depth perception difficulties impacting on moving through the 3D world, problems in tracking movement and in locating objects. It can also lead to visual fatigue, intermittent blindness, orientation and mobility anxiety, poor social and self-care skills, as well as poor reading skills and diminished performance.
 

With this project we are adopting an action research approach including an action where teachers will be taught about how to enhance the literacy attainments of children in each of these three broad categories. This project will harness the cross culture, multi-professional talents of partners to design, assess and deliver a comprehensive, cohesive training package for teachers, social pedagogues, parents and others available for every teacher in Europe that is struggling in teaching a child with CVI.