Special schools in trouble

The minister has discounted these claims, stating that funds will be provided. But a petition circulating on the Web claims that 14 private schools may soon close, including the Immortelle Children’s Centre, the Strategic Specialist Centre, Tacarigua, and the National Centre for Persons with Disabilities in San Fernando.

The situation that exists in Trinidad and Tobago is very simple.

Most of the specialist teaching for children with disabilities is there because private schools do the work of the State.

Up until quite recently children born with intellectual disabilities were often abandoned or put into institutions. The Lady Hochoy Homes actually came into existence in this State because of the exceedingly poor state of affairs for those with intellectual disabilities, in particular children with visible disabilities such as Down syndrome.

Lady Hochoy, along with others, organised funds to take children with disabilities off the streets and away from dire poverty. Gradually, the recognition that each child deserves to live with her own family and has the capacity to develop her individual potential if given the correct psychological, occupational and therapeutic support grew to replace the idea that a child with a disability is both a shame and a burden.

However, this residual sense of shame still exists in pockets among even the most educated individuals in our country. And that will continue until such time as it becomes evident that a person born with a disability is part of our society and has a right to live in that society.

That will only happen when children are educated within the mainstream and more particularly are given the facilities to develop as full human beings: to speak, to act and to interact.

When the State provides the means to ensuring that children with disabilities receive speech therapy and occupational therapy as well as physiotherapy and are taught to read and to write and are given the opportunity to develop intellectual as well as vocational skills, then people with disabilities will become visible as full human beings.

But the Ministry of Education has not as yet seen the light. It is mired in a system that sees education as the right of those who can pass traditional examinations using traditional methods. And the disability organisations allow this to happen.

There is no well-organised and assertive movement to keep these issues fully in the public domain.

There is no strong lobby to ensure that Government takes notice.

The law is there to protect all citizens and there is a Constitution that gives equal rights to all, but no one has as yet challenged the State in this right to education for children with disabilities. The problem is that our society still believes that the full responsibility for the care and development of a child born with a disability rests with the parent.

What would happen if the State were to turn around and say that it is the full responsibility of the parent to ensure the development and education of their so-called “normal” children? How many parents could afford to send their child to the best secondary school or to provide them with the necessary skilled teaching they feel to be their due? Yet, parents of children with autism and Down syndrome and cerebral palsy among other conditions are told that they must educate their children. Most of the students with special needs currently being educated in TT attend private schools.

Many of these schools are affiliated to voluntary organisations or were begun by parents. Without the subventions from Government they cannot exist. Up until 2015, a memorandum of understanding with the Ministry of Education provided funds for these special schools. But the current memorandum has now expired and there has been no renewal and no funds.

I am appalled at the cynicism of those who should be making provision for children, in their total disregard for the fact that just two years ago the Government, under a different administration to be sure, ratified the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

The fact is that nothing has really changed since then.

Parents, relatives, workers and the public at large have a responsibility to ensure that the State lives up to this responsibility. This means using every means available, which includes the media and the law to ensure that these inherent rights are protected.

Until those who represent people with disabilities get serious and place significant pressure on Government to protect the “the dignity of the human person and the equal and inalienable rights with which all members of the human family are endowed,” nothing will change and we will continue to pay lip service to that thing called social justice.

In other parts of the world both parents and disability groups would be beating down the doors of the Ministry of Education and the Office of the Prime Minister. But as usual the offices with responsibility have been let off the hook.

True almost 3,000 people have signed a petition calling on the minister to intervene. But signing petitions will make little difference if individuals are not prepared to take action and use their power as voters and as people with access to the law.

Jean Antoine Dunne is a social c o m - m e n - t a t o r , c r i t i c and artist.

She m a y be cont a c t e d at jantoine5@ outlook.

com