EdUHK I-WELL 1st Anniversary Ceremony cum Conference on Support for Students with Special Education Needs

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Established by the Faculty of Education and Human Development at The Education University of Hong Kong (EdUHK) in 2016, the Integrated Centre for Wellbeing (I-WELL) provides comprehensive services to students with special education needs (SEN). In celebration of I-WELL’s first anniversary, a conference entitled “Community Education and Rehabilitation in Supporting Preschool Children with Special Education Needs” was held today (17 June), attracting over a hundred participants, including social welfare professionals and parents.

Among others, officiating at the ceremony were Mr Fong Kai-leung, Assistant Director of the Social Welfare Department, Professor Lui Tai-lok, Vice President (Research and Development) at EdUHK, Professor Allan Walker, Dean of the Faculty of Education and Human Development at EdUHK and Professor Hue Ming-tak, Director of I-WELL at EdUHK.

In his welcoming remarks, Professor Lui spoke highly of I-WELL’s fruitful achievement in the past year: “I-WELL is a research and resource hub supporting collaborative initiatives towards the development of holistic well-being. Through integrating excellent research findings into the professional clinical services, I-WELL has brought about a happy childhood for SEN students”. Professor Walker also remarked that “I-WELL has established a leading position in the SEN field in Hong Kong. By utilising advanced equipment to assess the effectiveness of different therapies, I-WELL is dedicated to providing appropriate services to SEN students”.

Professor Hue summarised I-WELL’s achievements in the past year. He noted that the Centre has offered services to nearly 100 SEN students at primary and secondary schools and has collaborated with around 20 schools and organisations in research programmes and by providing support to them. Through the Evidence + Individualized Education Program (E+IEP) that it designed, the centre collects and analyses data about the learning behavior, individual abilities, education needs and cognitive thinking modes of target students, based on which it can design individual learning programmes for students with learning disabilities. The learning skills and emotional management of these students are greatly improved as a result.

With increasing numbers of SEN students in Hong Kong in recent years, over 9,000 children are on the waiting list for subvented pre-school rehabilitation services. I-WELL invited fourteen social welfare organisations participating in the government‘s 2015 Pilot Scheme of “On-site Pre-School Rehabilitation Services” to share their invaluable experiences at the Conference. They have served nearly 3,000 students, turning a new page in pre-school special education in Hong Kong.

Professor Hue added that as the Pilot Scheme only covered kindergartens, SEN children may not be able to receive continuous support once they became primary students. To bridge this gap, I-WELL will provide on-site assessment services for SEN primary and junior secondary students with the help of a portable EEG apparatus that can assess the attention, memory, cognitive and language abilities of the students by analysing their brain cell activity. This allows students to be assessed in familiar environments.

Appendix: Future Directions for I-WELL

For more information about I-WELL, please refer to its website: https://www.eduhk.hk/iwell/