Tess Cunningham Case Study Answers

Tess Cunningham is an 11 year old daughter from a stable two parent family. One of Tess’s parents is a nurse at the regional hospital and the other is a federal politician who works in the city. Tess is the only child with no future siblings on the way.

Tess’s family have quite a large network of friends who catch up on a regular basis. Both parents are heavily involved in their daughter’s upbringing, they both are involved with the school council meets and are a part of the arts committee. Both parents are active members of Living Proud LGBTI Community Services Australia who aim to promote the wellbeing of gender diverse people.

Tess attends the local Primary school in the middle to upper socio-economic suburbs and has an education assistant time of .2FTE. Tess Attends

However, her handwriting is an area that needs improvement, along with all strands of mathmatics. Her social skills need improving and both parents would like this area to be focused strongly on. It is concerning to them that she will not be included when she ventures onto secondary college.

3. Summary of the school background.

-Tess attends a local Primary school in a middle to high SES. For Tess, assistant time in a classroom is quite low with a total education assistant time of .2FTE, which is translated into either 1 day per week or 8 hours per week Education assistant time. This time is spread out helping Tess with her main areas of improvement which include handwriting and all strands of Mathematics. In a classroom Tess has the effective use of assistive technologies to assist her with her writing these consist of keyboards and touchscreens, laptops and tablets.

- Being that cerebral palsy is a physical disability it is not strongly associated with the way she behaves in class (Bochek, 2016). Like most children her age, Tess’s behaviour is her way of learning to cope with the demands of day to day activities (Bochek,