Help! My daughter C. just finished her penultimate year of school!

That's me, recording the party for posterity

This week, the Hubby and I dutifully attended C.'s end of school year party. There was a crafts activity in which C. participated not at all. Then some refreshments and a talk by an esteemed social worker. She's a friendly, intelligent woman (we know her personally) but her presentation had clearly been dumbed down and abridged to "suit" the audience's "tiny little mother mind" to borrow one of Elizabeth Aquino's gem-phrases (here for instance).

Her major point was that perceptions of our children's capabilities vary depending on the setting and the assessor. To prove that, we were shown. a slide show of a dozen optical illusions. Not two, not ten, a dozen! You know - to be sure we got the point.

Then she invited written questions from the parents (we were only about ten). In response to "Where can we send our children when they reach 21 and 'graduate' from the educational system?" she mentioned a couple of day programs in the city. Then she launched into the option of group residences - which I prefer to call "institutionalization".

She positively raved about them. "Nowadays it's far better than when I started working in the 70's," she said. "You can visit any time you want to - provided they aren't in the middle of some activity. Even the siblings can visit. So you can remain close, connected to your child."

I found it all a bit unsettling, to put it mildly. I was actually more incensed. Especially coming from a person I admire and respect. Is it any wonder that this country, so advanced in other fields, is antedeluvian in its approach to care for its citizens with disabilities?

And all this happened on the very day that J.K. Rowlings' NGO, Lumos, won the Overall Award at Britain's Charity Awards 2015.

Here is a synopsis of why it won:

Another of JK Rowlings' creations

In 2007, with support from Lumos, Moldova’s government pledged to reform its childcare system, closing institutions and replacing them with family and community-based services. The charity found that while non-disabled children were easy to place back into families, disabled children faced being left behind, as Moldova had no system to allow inclusive education in local mainstream schools for thousands of disabled children living away from home in grim residential special schools. So Lumos set about creating inclusive educational services from scratch.

It was a process that involved changing mindsets at every stage of the process – putting the needs of children above the needs of the State and at the heart of decision-making. Thousands of professionals had to be retrained. The charity used financial modelling to prove that replacing institutional care with home and community-based services is cheaper, as well as better for the children.

By now the number of In 2007, with support from Lumos, Moldova’s government pledged to reform its childcare system, closing institutions and replacing them with family and community-based services. The charity found that while non-disabled children were easy to place back into families, disabled children faced being left behind, as Moldova had no system to allow inclusive education in local mainstream schools for thousands of disabled children living away from home in grim residential special schools. So Lumos set about creating inclusive educational services from scratch.

It was a process that involved changing mindsets at every stage of the process – putting the needs of children above the needs of the State and at the heart of decision-making. Thousands of professionals had to be retrained. The charity used financial modelling to prove that replacing institutional care with home and community-based services is cheaper, as well as better for the children.

By now the number of institutionalized children in Moldova has reduced by 80 per cent  children in Moldova has reduced by 80 per cent.

Lumos, please invade my country!

Coming up: Some terrific educational tips for children with Cortical Visual Impairment (C. is one). The Hubby and I attended a day of lectures on that topic delivered by an expert in the field visiting from Massachusetts.