Holistic Development

2. Recognition of children and young people's needs in terms of their holistic development

Holistic development sees the child or young person as a whole person - physically, socially and emotionally, intellectually, morally and spiritually. Children and young people can develop to their full potential when all of their basic needs are met. Holistic development is related to children and young people's basic needs and they fall into five categories: physical, social, emotional, cognitive and language (see Tab1). Foods as example of physical needs and his deficiency or overabundance can determinate child physical development. This can affect child growing parameters, maturity of internal organs etc. Children can have problems with gross,

Abraham Maslow in his article, A Theory of Human Motivation (1943) postulated that human needs are arranged hierarchically. In this pyramidal model, lower level needs must be satisfied before needs in higher levels can be addressed. Professor Maslow recognised four groups of needs: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs and esteem needs (Fig 1). On the top of these needs hierarchy is the ultimate goal 'Self-Actualisation', but according to Maslow, only a small percentage of people reach this level (Allen and Gordon 2011:56-58). Other significant theory of needs were published by Mia Kellmer Pringle believed that needs should be met using a holistic approach rather than viewing them in a hierarchical manner. M. K. Pringle outlined four significant developmental needs which have to be met from birth: need for love and security, new experiences, price and recognition and need for responsibility (Pringle

Typical characteristic of the medical model is labelling. In the centre of this model is a diagnosis that can describe condition (deficit) of a child, not its individual needs. Opposite to this model is the social model. In this model the center is the child and its individual needs regardless of child abilities. Need for rejection of medical model came from disabled people themselves as a reaction on long term continued withdrawing from society. Social model acknowledged society that disable people are on first place a people and should be enable participate fully in society and take charge of their own lives (Ridell 2006). For example somebody with hearing difficulties can not be excluded from opportunities to learning of foreign language. There may be needed individual environment setting or technical individual support required (e.g. special hearing with different frecvence, one to one secession to support pronouncing, etc.), but that doesn’t can limited person choice and freedom for