The Weyburn Comprehensive School is benefiting from a new facility which has opened this winter for the Functionally Integrated Program, or FIP for short. Three carefully designed rooms, and the aides who accompany the three full-time and two part-time students in the program, make it possible for WCS to provide appropriate education for severely handicapped teens alongside all the other high school students in the city.

"School prepares students to be as productive or as good a citizen as they can be," said Darlene Martin, teacher in charge of programming, in a recent interview. "FIP is no different in that one of its major goals is to prepare cognitively-impaired kids for life after school, probably for a group home where they need to control their anger, put stuff away and get along, just like any student who lives away from home."

The students go shopping, participate in community recreational activities, learn how to plan menus and cook to the level of their ability, as well as how to sit quietly in family-like activities after dinner. "In the process, they learn how to interact with the public just like other members of the school population do," said Martin.

FIP rooms include a kitchen and school work area, as well as a major physiotherapy room and change area for personal care, with a small therapy pool and lifting track for immobilized students; and a space designed for the innovative, Dutch-designed Snoezelen therapy. The Snoezelen room is still waiting for equipment before being used. Jody Abel, on maternity leave, is actively pursuing the Snoezelen equipment for the room through grants from Ronald McDonald Charities.

The parents of the children are thrilled with FIP, said Martin. Without it, their children would live in residential situations away from home or would be unable to continue learning.

FIP students join the rest of the staff and student body in the cafeteria every day for lunch and, after a couple of months, the comfort level for everyone is growing, she said. "Before it was us and them. Everything that's new is threatening."

Now, some high school students are joining FIP students at lunch, or greeting the kids in the hallway. The FIP students go to WCS band practice and love everything the band plays, said Martin. For the two wheelchair-bound students, it's especially great because they love music, she said.

"Everyone learns to get along and deal with the other people in the community. How would they do that if they're segregated from one another?" she asks. While she acknowledges some initial discomfort with the cost of the program, she points out the children must be looked after in any case. If not here, then somewhere else, she notes.

Lynn Little, superintendent of student services for the Weyburn public and comprehensive boards, said Friday FIP is just one of many different kinds of programs the board funds. "Just as the tutorial program, the alternate education program, the Bridge School, the various vocational courses, the modified classes and the academic courses are designed to meet the needs of our diverse student population, so, too, is (FIP)," she said.

Renovations for the program cost $130,000, with about $37,000 from the WCS board and over $93,000 from the Saskatchewan government Little said the community has been supportive and generous, donating all or part of the cost of many miscellaneous items

When the Snoezelen room equipment arrives, the therapeutic possibilities of FIP will rise to yet another level, said Martin, adding the room could become a community resource but certainly would help draw parents to the city who need the specialized treatment for their children.