Special Education within Lóczy - An Interesting Challenge (booklet only, in 3 languages) - DOWNLOADABLE

Emmi Pikler and her staff mainly cared for healthy children at the Pikler Institute in Budapest. However, during the 65 years of the infant home's existence, there were several occasions when they  had to care for physically or mentally handicapped children. In such cases, they employed special needs professionals to assist with the children.

For many years, Dr. Sjoukje Borbély, a child psychologist and special needs teacher, strengthened the Pikler Institute team. The experiences of her years there were shared with professional audiences in a film and the accompanying booklet produced together with Borbala Szentpétery.

This item is the booklet only, for the DVD, please see links above.

What are the needs of a child living with special needs – in an institute, which in itself renders its little inhabitants in need of special care, due to the lack of an initial secure attachment a family of their own would provide? This tri-lingual (English, Dutch and Hungarian) booklet, a transcript of the talk given at the Pikler Institute’s conference in 2006, describes the challenges of and the great potential in caring for children with special needs in the Piklerian attitude.

Dr. Sjoukje Borbély trained as an orthopedagogue in the Netherlands before arriving in Hungary, where she became a special therapist and a child psychologist, with a PhD in early mother-infant relationship. Hired by Emmi Pikler, she spent 12 years working at the Pikler Institute. Afterwards, she went on to work with children living with special needs at the Psychology Department of the College of Special Needs Education. Today, in addition to working as a university lecturer in psychology, she works mainly with the parents of disabled children in an early intervention centre in Budapest.