MORE than 22 of Jamaica’s special children in the Corporate Area who are ready to begin primary schools in September will not be able to do so because many of the island’s schools lack the proper facilities and space to accommodate them.

Antonica Gunter-Gayle, programme director for the Early Stimulation Project, told the Observer that of the more than 60 students who were ready to leave the programme, only 38 had been able to graduate because of the limited space offerings.

In fact, she noted that several parents were “depressed because of the lack of placement”.

“Even though we graduated 38 children, we had over sixty children that were ready. If we had sixty places ready, we would have had 60 children graduating and not 38,” Gunter-Gayle pointed out.

According to Gunter-Gayle, if there was any real interest in giving the disabled a fighting chance there should be more advocacy and lobbying to correct the situation.

“These are the things we need to lobby for, because it’s really sad to see supportive parents with a child who has done well, and the child is denied placement in the regular school system,” the programme director told the Observer.

Furthermore, Gunter-Gayle pointed out that the fact that some were physically disabled was not the major deterrent in most cases.

“Some of them that are not being placed, it’s not because of a physical disability, but rather because of the lack of enough spaces for children with special needs”, she explained.

“We really need to provide more for them. We are not saying we should go overboard, but the Ministry of Education says ‘every child must learn and every child can learn’, and every child really has a rightful place whether in a school setting, or in an intervention centre, there is a lot for us to do,” she argued.

According to Gunter-Gayle, to not correct the situation would be to stymie the chance to witness what was not an everyday miracle.

“It’s heart-breaking to a mother, to see a child that sometimes the doctor says would be a vegetable and would never walk, never talk, after intervention, reaches the age where it is ready for school and finds that there is no place for this child in the school because there isn’t enough space for children with disabilities”, the programme director noted.

The hurt was further compounded, she said, as “these children could have been left up to the state, or put away in children’s homes” had the parents not decided “to stick it out and try to bring the child to his or her full potential”.

“It’s hard; what do you tell a mother like that?” she queried.

Gunter-Gayle’s sentiments were echoed by State Minister in the Labour and Social Security Ministry Senator Floyd Morris, who spoke at the graduation exercise at the Jamaica Conference Centre in Kingston recently.

“We have to establish a mechanism that is going to be more responsive and adaptive to the needs of special children so that as they make the transition from the early stimulation programme, they can be fully incorporated into the mainstream education system,” Morris said.

In the meantime, Morris said, he would be making “rigorous representation to ensure that some form of assistance is provided for parents who have children with severe forms of disabilities”.

“Some provisions have to be made within the state apparatus for parents who have to cater to children with severe forms of disabilities because they are severely restricted due to the nature of the disability of their children,” Morris told the group.

The senator, who is also a member of the disabled community, also urged parents of children with disabilities to ‘think big’ and take the lead in helping to develop the potential of their charges.

– dunkleya@jamaicaobserver.com