| Description | Interview with Mr W. Cunliffe, director of the RNIB Vocational Guidance Centre for Blind Adolescents at Hethersett, Surrey and Mrs Marsden, occupational therapist at the Vocational Guidance Centre. Mr Cunliffe continues to talk about the need to avoid institutionalising people, describes some of the practical work undertaken by students at the centre, the need for accuracy, and the benefits for them in learning skills for industry (tracks 1-4)
Interview with Mrs Marsden. She talks about the encouragement of competitiveness amongst students to build up a greater volume and speed of work and measure themselves against other people in the workshop. Mr Cunliffe joins the conversation to talk about the importance of discouraging complacency and the spatial concepts of blind students. Mrs Marsden talks about breaking movements down to identify whether students are left handed or right handed, specific issues around working with partially sighted students who are encouraged to use their hands instead of their eyes. Mr Cunliffe talks about the need to give students confidence with their hands to relieve them of the restrictions of bad sight and describes the construction of adapted tools for firms. He stresses the importance of conditioning students for employment. Mrs Marsden talks about the necessity of rationalising jobs for blind students, teaching them to economise with movement to adapt themselves to employment. Mr Cunliffe emphasises the need to maintain the goodwill of students and gives details about some of the staff at Hethersett who have contacts with industrial firms in the area. He demonstrates some of the machine work and household repairs taught at the centre, and talks about some of the tools, including a telephone switchboard to assess students telephony skills (tracks 5-13).
Total: 33.46 mins
Dubber's reference number: PLA KF571E0009080 |