PLANS are in place to develop the Voluntary Organisation for the Upliftment of Children (VOUCH) as a centre for the assessment of children with special needs.

“VOUCH, we hope, will become a centre where the specially trained teachers in the schools (and) the parents can take the child, and have the child assessed, so that the therapy and plans to help that child can go ahead,” Minister of Education Ronnie Thwaites said.

Thwaites was addressing a special forum on primary education Thursday at the Jones Town Primary School in Kingston.

Citing his own experience, the education minister said he was “a dunce bat” for the first two years in school because he was placed to sit at the back of the class and was unable to see the board.

“They never found it out until the first two disastrous years and then they gave me a pair of glasses and the rest is history because I could see,” he said.

He said the Government is committed to providing additional places where students with special needs can be assessed and referred to the relevant institutions for assistance.

“Many of us have problems of one sort or the other, and so we are providing a place not only within the school,” he said, noting that emphasis will also be placed on having trained special education teachers in the schools.

VOUCH, a non-governmental agency, was created in 1979 with the merger of two children’s organisations — the Child Welfare Association and the Jamaica Children’s Service Society.

It caters to expectant mothers as well as children up to six years old through a pre-natal clinic, nursery and pre-school, and a basic school.