Design, implementation and evaluation of a road safety education programme aimed at mentally handicapped, with the support of the Children's Traffic Park of the “Ricardo Tormo Circuit” of Cheste, with necessary modifications. A first phase of this work included the design and development of a road safety education programme tailored to the special characteristics of the target population of our intervention. For this first phase we start from a road safety education program developed by the Research Group DATS Children's Traffic Park “Ricardo Tormo” of Cheste. Taking as reference the programme adjust their content to the capabilities of our target population, we developed a new programme taking those aspects relevant to the group and rejecting or reworking those who were not so.

The programme was finally divided into 10 teaching units that responded to each of the established sessions. In these teaching units were organized all theoretic contents were intended to assimilate subjects following a homogeneous structure in each and every session. A facilitating meaningful learning structure consisting in changing the level of abstraction necessary for proper assimilation of the concept is followed. This was based on activities with drawings, then photographs of real environments seen, followed by great animations to perceive movement, the next set of activities using videos, and finally a simulation by the users is done in semi-real environments (controlled).

The second phase involved the training of monitors participating in the project. To this end, all the monitors they would intervene in one way or another in the project at the Children Traffic Park of the "Ricardo Tormo" High Speed Circuit of Cheste for a first contact with the Programme. Then they proposed three working sessions (one for each community to facilitate maximum operational activity) for 4 hours in which they were instructed both strategies to continue to implement our programme and the necessary communication skills to be used when addressing a group of this nature.

Those who had been in the previous application were differentiated; giving them differentiated training based on their level of experience in the previous intervention. So we made sure the homogeneity when implementing such a programme.

Along with the training phase, the selection of subjects considered "eligible" to participate in the program was conducted (following the established guidelines concerning degree of cognitive impairment and degree of physical disability).

Basically, and because of the population under study is limited, we get a high number of subjects who had already participated in the previous edition which is why we opted for the ability to leverage that fact to the benefit of the programme and observe whether this programme is feasible to apply in subjects who time before have gone through it and get a significant improvement in their knowledge of road safety.

The last phase of implementation involved the implementation of Road Safety Education Programme in each of the participating centres. This was applied in their own classrooms and real environments close to IVADIS centres.
During the two applications in 2004 and 2006 the programme has led to nearly two hundred users of nine IVADIS centres of the three provinces of the Valencian Community (Belcaire, Bennager, Buris Anna, El Maestrat, La tramoia, Marxalenes, Praga, Rafalafena and Virgen de la Luz). Twenty-five of these visitors participate in two years' implementation of the programme)

The last phase with which this project closes was consistent to visit the "Ricardo Tormo" Children's Traffic Park of Cheste in which participants performed a series of activities to establish the knowledge learned during the implementation of road safety education activities in the centres. During the visit, subjects visited the facilities of the "Ricardo Tormo" High Speed Circuit having the opportunity to see some activity (cars and motorcycles training) and other areas (media room, breafing area, etc.) that are not accessible to the general population. Thereupon, they entered the Children's Traffic Park and there, in a semi -real environment (which are some of the most important variables for fully controlled road safety), a series of activities to enhance knowledge were made and acquired in didactic units of the Road Safety Education Programme.

The set of actions developed within the Road Safety Education Programme for Persons with Disabilities includes a time period of approximately 9-10 months in which is included from the adaptation to the Road Safety Education Programme is included to the visit to the Children's Traffic Park, going through the training of the instructors, and the period of implementation of the Road Safety Education Programme itself.

The initial step was to design instructional activities for each centre monitors which had to undertake the implementation of the Programme to equip them with the basic knowledge and basic communication strategies along with basic guidelines for our program which dealt with the essential purpose of the application of the same be as homogeneous as possible, and therefore, comparable results that were obtained in the subsequent assessment.

Furthermore, this programme had an assessment. Among all the subjects proposed, a random sampling was done to determine, for all who will go through the programme, who will be those who will participate in the evaluation of the results, which was conducted according to a pre-test and a post-test completed after the implementation of the programme.

Tasks performed have been designed and developed by the educational programme of the PIT, the training of teachers of the IVADIS centres, training of monitors of the PIT of Cheste, the conducting of material, evaluation and assignment of subjects to programs according to their deficiencies, the evaluation of the programme itself and media dissemination.

Made for Education and Road Safety Initiatives by DATS Research Group.
 

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Valencian Government. Department of Social Welfare. IVADIS