Six families raising children with communication challenges have each received an assistive device, Grid Pad, and trained on how to use them to enhance their children’s communication.

The families received the devices from Smartbox Company, a United Kingdom based organisation that designs assistive devices and software to help with communication challenges.

The training was provided by a team of Speech and Language Therapists from Columbia University, United States of America, with support from Ghana’s Special Education Division.

Mr Anthony Boateng, the Deputy Director of the Ghana Education Service (GES), who received the devices from officials of Columbia University, handed them to Mrs Bernice Aduo Addae, the Head of the Special Education Division to be presented to the families.

Mrs Addae, on her part, said: “We are happy to be able to support some children with communication challenges, we pray for more of such support to enable more children to benefit.”

She said the division welcomed any such support from organisations; home and abroad, to enable it to equip and assist more children with special educational needs to enhance communication.

“We are also very happy that the GES has embraced most of the programmes that the Special Education Division intends to implement in schools throughout Ghana to ensure the proper implementation of the Inclusive Education Policy,” she said.

Professor Carol Hammer, a Speech and Language Therapist at the Columbia University, who presented the devices, said Ghana was selected to be a beneficiary after the Special Education Division applied for support.

She said the Columbia University was working with the Division to ensure efficiency in the usage of the devices.

Ms Belinda Bukari, an official in charge of Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities at the Division, said there had been an earlier training held for teachers in the various unit schools of the GES.

The unit schools are designated classrooms attached to regular schools that attend to children with special educational needs.

She said all the children whose families received the Grid Pad had been mainstreamed.