STIMULATION Plus has spent the last half-a-decade serving special- needs kids, most of them from low-income families.

In this, the early childhood centre has been a godsend for many parents who otherwise would not be able to afford their children a good start in a society that, more often than not, deals harshly with people with disabilities.

“Children with disabilities are children first, they have unlocked potentials, and they need opportunities and the right environment for them to succeed,” centre head Antonica Gunter-Gayle told Career & Education, providing insight into the philsophy which guides Stimulation Plus.

“We should focus on their ability and not so much on their disability. Children with disability, if provided with the opportunity, can later on become taxpayers instead of tax beneficiaries,” she added.

It is to this ideal that the centre — whose name draws inspiration from the Early Stimulation Programme (ESP) of the Ministry of Labour and Social Security — strives to realise.

ESP is an early intervention programme of the Ministry of Labour & Social Security established in 1975 by Dr Mangold Thorbourne and Joyce Brown to serve the needs of young children with various developmental disorders. It currently serves more than 1,400 children with various types of disabilities islandwide — though beneficiaries are concentrated in the Kingston Metropolitan Area, Portland, parts of St Catherine, and St Thomas.

“The services are varied and fall into two main categories — community-based and centre-based. Our community-based programme offers individualised special intervention — in the homes, schools, nurseries, government and private institutions. This is carried out by a team of child development officers who are trained in community-based rehabilitation/intervention and early childhood education, care and development,” noted Gunter-Gayle.

“The centre-based programme offers developmental assessment, re-evaluations/reviews, parent counselling, parent training, physiotherapy, and psychological intervention,” she added.

Stimulation Plus — located at 1A Ostend Close in the Bourmouth Gardens community in Kingston — is their latest addition to the programme’s service offerings.

Having opened with 10 students in 2006, Stimulation Plus today offers care and education to a whopping 105 three to six-year-olds, all of them with special needs ranging from intellectual impairment to learning disabilities, Downs Syndrome, cerebral palsey, behavioural disorder and autism, among others. And even as the stduent population has increased, so too has the staff. Five years ago, there were only four; today, there are 21.

The growth in the institution is evidence of the fact that the school came into being at a time when the need for early intervention programmes/facilities of learning for special needs children was great. And that need has not diminished.

“The School of Hope — our feeder school in 2006 — was unable to place all the students we were sending to them for school placement, and so a mother broke down real badly after hearing that her child did not receive a placement and this moved my heart,” Gunter-Gayle told Career & Education.

“I had dialogue with Mr Ransford Wright, former head of the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities, and the permanent secretary in Ministry of Labour and Social Security. They decided that we would create an opportunity for our children with a need for special early intervention,” she added.

And so the centre began, with funding from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security and the special education department of the Ministry of Education.

“For the most part, the curriculum used by the Ministry of Education is used. However, the lesson/material are modified and tailored to meet the needs of each child. We also use, for the extra special students, the Denver Developmental Portage Curriculum — (though) this curriculum can be used with all children,” Gunter-Gayle said, citing some of the teaching methods used at Stimulation Plus where their mantra is “every child must, every child can”.

“The teaching-learning aspect does not always have to do with material or resource, but with how, as practioners, we apply ourselves — how we practice and how flexible and creative we are. It is very important to find unique ways of getting the job done. We believe ‘every child must and every child can’ — even our very extra special children,” she added.

“Critical thinking and reflective practice are also encouraged among our early-intervention practitioners in order to reach every child under our care in the best possible way,” Gunter-Gayle said further.

To help guarantee learning outcomes, the team at Stimulation Plus is comprised of 18 specialists, including a psychologist, a trained nurse, a guidance counsellor, and physiotherapist. All other members of staff have training in early childhood education and development with additional training in childhood disabilities, and other related areas, Gunter-Gayle said.

“Stimulation Plus offers inclusive early childhood education, through a team of practitioners who see every child that enters the institution as their own. The students receive individualised attention and the intervention they receive is administered with love and patience. We believe in our children and that they are not only special by virtue of birth, but they are indeed special and as a result they have taught us patience and how to love,” she said.

This was in evidence when Career & Education visited the insitution recently as classes were conducted, at least one of them under a tree on the lawn and the others on the inside. But the centre is not without its woes, particularly as it relates to the infrastructure.

Still, slowly, but surely, they are making progress. In the last month, some work has been done on the roof and new bathroom fixtures have been put in place, while the interior of the building has been painted.

It is progress that heartens Gunter-Gayle.

“I really am very excited. I feel good. I feel we have received well-needed assistance. The Child Month Committee came and gave us a Stimulation Room with equipment and additional adaptive aids, plus chairs and desks and a television,” she said.

“The roof is not quite finished, but we have been receiving assistance. The prime minister’s wife (Lorna Golding) also gave us a cheque for $100,000 for the roof,” Gunter-Gayle added, noting that the centre has also received additional play equipment, including a swing and funnel tyres.

Others who have also helped, she said, include Glendon Gordon and his team from Gaurdian Life.

Whatever the challenges, however, Gunter-Gayle said that their successes at the end of the day were well worth their effort.

“We had a child who recently started to walk and the parent actually broke down in tears. There is another parent who broke down because she never knew that her child with a disability could get help. So there is a lot of progress and reason for hope,” she said.

Another extension of this ESP is the Portland Early Stimulation Project, operating out of the Buff Bay Health Centre in Portland.

“These projects commenced in 2007 with 25 children and now serve a population of 116 children with various types of disabilities,” Gunter-Gayle said. “Intervention is carried out in Portland and its environs, which captures communities such has Bangaridge, White River and Kildare all the way back to Port Antonio.”

Approximately 12,500 children with developmental problems have benefited from this programme since its inception.

“Evaluation of developmental gains indicates that the majority of children made significantly greater improvements than they would have done without an intervention programme,” said Gunter-Gayle.

“Reports from the Jamaica Association for Persons with Mental Retardation indicate that clients, who are age six years and referred for school placement by the Early Stimulation Programme, do, in fact, perform with greater skill than their peers, who have had no intervention prior to entering school,” she added.

At the same time, she said that in 1993, a UNESCO evaluation of the programme pronounced it as “innovative, realistic and appropriate”.

“It was thought to be an economically feasible, relevant and effective approach to early intervention services for children with disabilities,” she said, adding that the programme “has potential for replicability, expansion and integration into any service provision for preschool children”.

“Taking into consideration the demand for this service and the fact that the programme is operated by the Government of Jamaica, it’s our goal to establish similar programmes across other parishes on the island, in an effort to adequately meet the preschool disabled child,” she said.