Alketa loves to splash. No sooner is the bowl of water in front of her than her fingers are in it. Now fill in the fragrant foam and spray properly while listening to the soft relaxing music – the twelve-year-old is thrilled. The nurse has to be quick if she wants to fulfill all the girl’s wishes and at the same time ensure that the student and her surroundings remain reasonably dry.
When it comes to water, Cordula Birngruber knows that Alketa is in her element. “Since the day we moved in, she’s been doing swimming movements every day,” says the head of the specialist service at “Helping Hands” with a laugh. “Because she really wants to swim again and knows that there is a new pool now.” In a recently completed new building. Birngruber has been committed to the welfare of 74 children and young people in the support center for people with severe multiple disabilities in Neuaubing for 13 years; she has known Alketa since she was little. At two and a half years old, the girl was the youngest child ever admitted to the facility.
It’s been ten years now. At that time there was still a charming, winding school complex with a picturesque garden and a swimming pool on the club’s 10,000 square meter property on Köferinger Straße. But the building was getting old. And because spatial constellations such as shared group rooms for schools and curative education day care centers (HPT) are no longer permitted, the old building had to give way three years ago.
The new home on the same property is now twice the size and specifically tailored to the needs of its young residents aged between three and 21. “Nevertheless, at first we were really concerned that the children might have adjustment problems,” says day-care center manager Michaela Hoffstedt. “But then they came into the new building and beamed all over their faces.”
Because the new complex is special. Not only because he documents the “giant achievement of a small club” that has set out to put up a house for 31 million euros, of which he has to shoulder seven million himself, as headmistress Angelika Hillreiner says. Or because this project shows that children with mental and physical disabilities also have a right to education. When the association “Helfende Hände” emerged from a self-help group of committed parents in 1969, children with mental disabilities in Bavaria were still considered unfit for school and education. Now the government of Upper Bavaria finances a large part of the school construction and the district of Upper Bavaria supports the costs for the HPT rooms.
Principal Angelika Hillreiner
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
In the corridors there is enough space for the companions of children and young people.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
Above all, the new building is conceptually exceptional. Already the gears. They are extra wide, with plenty of space for independent wheelchair use. There are parking spaces on the sides of the corridors, big enough for all the pupils’ means of transport. The aids are specially designed for the young people, each and everyone has a different vehicle. Doors, elevators and showers are just as oversized as the corridors – so that nursing beds can also fit in and through.
The niches light up in orange, yellow, blue, green, red and purple. The colors can also be found on the doors or in the bathroom, for easier orientation. “We have twelve class groups, two classes always share one colour,” says Rector Hillreiner. The group areas themselves are divided into a learning room and a HPT room, connected by a glass door. There should also be haptically readable signs so that all students know where they are.
All elements in the rooms are height-adjustable, the floors have underfloor heating and the walls absorb sound. And often enough unusual things can be found in the rooms. The “slit drum” in the music room, for example, on which you can lie down to feel the vibration of the sounds. Or the roller slide in the romping room.
“We managed to create a very barrier-free school here,” says Hillreiner. Not least thanks to the commitment of the approximately 70-strong team of employees and the honorary board of directors. The “Helping Hands” have always played a pioneering role in supporting people with complex disabilities: “There is no facility like our support center in Neuaubing apart from the Janusz Korczak School in Freiburg,” says day care center manager Hoffstedt.
Different colors help with orientation.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
It will be a while before Alketa and her classmates can use the swimming pool.
(Photo: Florian Peljak)
“The children,” emphasizes Irakli Parjanadze, “can do everything with us.” The curative education nurse shows innovative aids. Knives with a curved handle, for example, or storage devices that, at the touch of a button, play back the parents’ speech recordings with stories from the weekend at the morning circle.
However, not everything is quite finished on the site on Köferinger Straße. In the garden, to the delight of the children, the excavators still go up and down. And Alketa and her classmates also have to do without swimming for the time being. The therapy pool is already filled with water. The rails for the lifter, with the help of which the young people are to be set down at the edge of the pool without too much heaving, are already mounted on the ceiling. But the technology is complex and it has to work perfectly. “We hope to be able to open the pool for the new school year,” says headmistress Angelika Hillreiner. With an Alketa then certainly beaming with joy.