A Mother’s Story

Elizabeth Harry, formerly Teelucksingh, is one such individual.

In 1975 her first child, Melanie, was born. She knew from an early stage that something was wrong. Melanie’s cry was different. Eventually Melanie was diagnosed with cerebral palsy. She had suffered severe brain damage, but her intellectual functioning was normal. While it was obvious to her mother that her daughter was making sense of the world, there were no facilities, in particular therapeutic support systems, to enable her to live a fulfilling life or to develop skills of communication.

Beth’s reaction was, what can I do to move on? She already had a master’s degree in education and was teaching at the University of the West Indies. But, as she says, “I knew nothing about disability”. Her first instinct was to start a small playgroup in her home so that she could have a community around her. But then she met Wendy Gomez and Joan Knowles who were already working with children with disabilities. “The kids need a teacher,” they told her. So instead of a little playgroup, she combined forces with the two therapists and started a school in a small house in Woodbrook. This small pioneering group gave parents of persons with many varying conditions the opportunity to have speech therapy, physiotherapy and schooling in one building. The school closed temporarily when Beth moved to Toronto with her husband and infant son Mark in 1978. She used the time to gain a Diploma in Special Education. The school reopened in 1979.

Under the guidance of Joan Knowles who had trained under the famous Bobath who developed neuro-developmental physical therapy, Melanie developed from a “floppy little thing”. “I am a huge believer in intensive therapy”, her mother says. No wonder that The Immortelle Children’s Centre has become famous as the only school that offers various in-house therapies including music therapy, art therapy, aqua therapy and equine therapy.

Melanie lived for only five years and her story is chronicled in Beth’s book Melanie. Bird with a Broken Wing: A Mother’s Story (2010). But the Immortelle Children’s Centre has grown to become the primary school catering for persons with varying disabilities in Trinidad and Tobago. In the early years the school was funded through fees and through donations. By 1985 it was catering for 35 children with a range of conditions from Autism and Down Syndrome to Cerebral Palsy to severe learning disorders. There were also children with dyslexia and others who had been assessed as having severe behavioural problems many of whom, Professor Harry says, were probably children with autism.

The small staff of six full time assistants and one trained teacher used principles of speech therapy taught to them by the speech therapist Wendy Gomez. By this time the speech therapist and physiotherapist were not an integral part of the school. So parents had to access physiotherapy privately. Much of the financial support for parents who could not pay fees came from Port-of- Spain Rotary Club, Lions Club and Kiwanis.

Private funding in the seventies enabled a number of students to go to this school and to access therapy. Beth mentions a young man who was both visually impaired and deaf. Fr. Eugene Delahunt had introduced him to Mr Bernard Broadbridge of Port-of-Spain Rotary who in turn had sent him to the Immortelle School. The Rotary Club paid his fees. This young man, she says, at the age of seven produced accurate and beautifully executed drawings of his surroundings.

His mother had initially tried to have him educated in the school for the deaf, but because he was blind he was not accepted. She then sought to have him accepted by the school for the blind, who would not take him because they said he was deaf. He taught himself letters. Beth took him on as a student at the Immortelle Centre when he was about seven and, as Beth says, “We did what we could”. He was so bright and such an achiever that she sought funding to send him to the Perkins School for the Blind who gave him a place if she could raise the money. Beth and her group ran an exhibition of his work in West Mall and did everything they could to raise the money through community contacts and business.

This was 1986 and that year Beth moved to the United States. The young man remained in the Immortelle school until 1991, but the Perkins offer fell through and today he is living hand to mouth in Maloney where, she says, “many take him advantage of him.”

Why did she leave Trinidad? “I was burnt out”, she answers. Not only was I the president of the association for the retarded, but I was also running the school. I couldn’t do it any more. I needed to go”.

So Beth began a PhD in Special Education in America and Jacqui Leotaud agreed to be president and principal until someone else took over.

Beth, who is a former Head of Department of Teaching and Learning at the University of Miami, is back in Trinidad on sabbatical with the intention of writing a history of the school. She wants to record the narratives of persons who have been involved in its development. For her the Immortelle Centre is an example of what has been happening internationally and proof of what can be done in small island states despite shoestring budgets.

She says that most stories of such achievements begin with personal motivation. Parents are key.

Beth emphasises that a great deal has already been accomplished. She points to the vast differences in attitude and facilities for persons with disabilities compared to 1975 when her daughter was born. The government now supports private schools and government owns the land on which the current Immortelle Children’s Centre was built. There are now subsidies for teachers’ salaries. But the ethos of the school remains the same. The Immortelle Children’s Centre now works in collaboration with the University of Toronto and the Department of Neuro Psychology of Seton Hall University who send their staff and students every year to do assessments of students and who organise the curriculum for the summer camp, pro bono.

I ask whether she thinks that the future lies in inclusion and mainstreaming and her reply is deeply thoughtful.

“From a parents’ perspective the most important thing is that their child is loved and respected, and has the opportunity to develop his or her potential. Had there been an opportunity for Melanie to attend mainstream school I would have had to be sure that she was loved and respected.” For her the bottom line is, “Do not put my child in a place where she is ridiculed or mocked or not loved. It must be good, safe and loving.”

“Inclusion is a wonderful principle, and a very demanding principle. You need huge supports for inclusion to work. You need support in the classroom. Teachers need to be trained. The curriculum needs to be appropriately adapted. A child may be in mainstream but yet excluded if the curriculum does not fit her needs”. Having said that, she agrees that with support from well trained teachers there is no reason why children with moderate to mild disabilities should not attend mainstream schools.

As far as this Professor of Special Education is concerned the exams faced by most eleven year olds in this country lead to high competitiveness. She agrees that inclusion will make young people see and value their peers who appear different. But for her much would have to be changed for inclusion to work, including the attitudes of parents who may feel that having a child with a disability in a classroom would adversely affect their own child’s chance of success in exams.

How do you change attitudes? By constantly repeating the message. So that people are continuously hearing about the abilities and the value of persons with so called disabilities. Parents also need to keep up the pressure on governments.

It is obvious that this woman has no time for negative statements or attitudes. She has dreamt to change the world.