A road in deplorable condition in Papine, St Andrew, behind the University of Technology, is the unlikely location for several unique institutions serving Jamaica’s education system. Included among them, on the pothole-filled thoroughfare, is the McCam Child Development Centre.

McCam, perhaps because of its location, has been wrongly labelled as a school for intellectually challenged children, when in fact it caters for children with abilities across the spectrum — from those with learning disabilities to the gifted and talented.

“McCam is an inclusive early childhood setting. When it started, the focus was for children with special needs in a typical learning environment. We wanted to take away the stigma that surrounded children with special needs and we think McCam is a leader in that respect,” the institution’s co-founder and executive director, Pauline Watson-Campbell, told Career & Education.

But McCam is more than a school educating typical developing and special children together. Its other services include carrying out assessments of children, the training of teachers and other stakeholders on how to assist similar children, conducting seminars, and research on child developmental issues of importance to the country at large.

Attitudes have changed in the 24 years since McCam was established in that parents of typical children are less worried about their children “catching” a disability from children with learning difficulties, and the institution takes some credit for that.

“Over the years we have had a change in people’s thinking and I applaud the parents who have brought their children who do not have any exceptionalities so we have been able to create that environment,” said Watson-Campbell, who is affectionately called “Auntie Pauline”.

Currently there are 69 children aged at least three months to seven years old in the day programme, 25 of whom have special needs. With class sizes kept at about 10 and with one teacher and one assistant teacher to each class, the student to teacher ratio is much smaller than a regular preparatory school, which suits the parents.

“Parents with children with mild disabilities tend to move them into typical prep schools but others wonder what’s going to happen once they leave McCam. They develop a relationship here — McCam is a protective little bubble,” commented special educator, Debra Valentine, who is in charge of the education programme.

Watson-Campbell said parents are comfortable having children at different levels of development in the same setting.

“We can cover all groups of children because the curriculum is set up to accommodate children moving as quickly or as slowly as they need to,” she explained.

McCam’s resource centre fills a much-needed void in the Jamaica’s educational system in that it offers a full range of child assessment services. The clinical team is comprised of an educational psychologist, special educator, occupational therapist, speech therapist and a behavioural therapist.

“My thinking is that you should make interventions as early as you can. You will get a better outcome than if you wait until the child is five or above,” said Watson-Campell, who is an occupational therapist by training.

She noted that the Mico CARE Centre, where she worked before starting McCam, only does assessments of children from age six, which “as a developmental person, I felt that was much too late”.

With greater emphasis being placed on the early childhood sector by Government, McCam’s important function has not gone unnoticed.

“We have received a lot more support from the Ministry of Education over the last four years, with the recognition that we are providing a service that they are not at the moment. In the ministry, there is a serious intention to deal with the needs of children at the early childhood stage,” said Valentine.

Its status as a not-for-profit organisation has helped McCam to solicit funding from state bodies like the CHASE Fund, as well as private companies, such as GraceKennedy, to keep down the cost of its clinical functions, as well as conduct useful research on learning and developmental issues in children.

Speech therapy, for example, is offered at one-third of the cost of other providers and term fees for the school are just over $40,000 — less than most well-established prep schools or kindergartens.

“It could not be run as a private business and still serve a wide range of persons. Most persons would not be able to afford the fees because of the team of professionals we have,” the executive director explained.

Like most entities, more generous financial donations would be accepted. It would be used on more assessment materials, which are sourced overseas and perhaps to separate the resource room from the school to make more space for all concerned.

One concern of the founder is that early childhood practitioners and teachers need to co-operate with researchers on child development issues.

“We haven’t yet got into the idea of the importance of research for making an impact on the society as whole,” Watson-Campbell noted.

In the meantime, McCam is doing its part to make the public more aware of the importance of early assessment of children, as this could help explain why almost one-third of the nation’s children leave primary school unable to read, and 70 per cent of students leave secondary school without basic qualifications.