THOUGH thousands of students across Jamaica returned to face-to-face schooling last month, the plight of some 600 of their peers who are already excluded from regular school because of multiple disabilities has worsened as the cash-strapped entity which caters to them has been unable to reopen fully.

Sandrea Long-White, project manager of Community Based Rehabilitation Jamaica (CBRJ), which provides access to education, rehabilitation, and therapeutic intervention for children with disabilities, told the Jamaica Observer that the entity has been struggling to find the funds to upgrade its four facilities to meet the stipulations and guidelines for reopening. In addition, she said one centre, located in St Elizabeth, now needs to relocate from the flood-prone area in which it is situated.

“We are now trying to reopen all centres. The issue that we are having is that, because we get funding from the Ministry of Education, mostly to pay staff, and some from the Ministry of Labour and Social Security that takes care of some of the administrative functions, that is really not enough to reach all the children that we need to reach or provide the support needed for the programme,” Long-White said.

“We are trying to reopen because the parents are crying out for that, because they know the progress the children make when they are in a setting like that, but we don’t have enough money to reopen the centres because we will have to put in isolation areas and so on,” the project manager stated.

A total of $1 million stands between the entity and the children it is striving to reach.

“For example, to reopen in St Elizabeth, we started some work, but we need about another $500,000 for that programme. For Spanish Town, we need about another $400,000 to be able to put in the isolation areas so those children can come out. The longer you take for some of them to come in and get their intervention and therapy, you can see areas where they start to regress. So you almost, for some of them, have to be working from scratch to try to build up their skills,” Long-White said.

“For Mandeville, they have started working in the communities and have started the programme, but there are some things that need to be in place, so we need about another $100,000 for that programme to begin,” she told the Observer.

In the meantime, she said the community-based intervention side of the programme has also been stymied as the single mode of transport which serves the children across the four parishes where the centres are located is down.

“One of our greatest needs, though — and this is even before the pandemic, and even now greater in terms of going into the communities to see what is happening with them and provide the support — we have one vehicle that supplies all the parishes that we work in, and it is down.

“So, you can imagine we cannot provide the support that is needed at the home level,” Long-White explained.

“Ideally, when we are up and running properly, the staff, depending on the distance, will do five to six visits in a day. Ideally, we need a vehicle per parish. To compound it the vehicle is a 2006 model, so for the past four or five years we have been spending money to keep it running. Right now it is parked, so we are trying to see if we can raise some funds to get another vehicle or get one donated, even if it is only one,” she said.

Being mobile, she said, is critical in order to reach those children whose parents do not have the resources to take them to the respective centres.

“Some areas the staff don’t really have transportation to go, and those children are just left there, and when they are left without the support and intervention that we provide, then it becomes so burdensome for the family and that’s how the abuse comes in,” Long-White said.

“The child deserves the same thing as every other child deserves as it relates to their quality of life. It’s their right also, so we need to give them that sort of support. If they can’t reach it, we take it to them,” she noted.

Meanwhile, Long-White decried the poor remuneration for workers in the field.

“The reason we can’t attract anybody is that, really, they are getting minimum wage for all that they are doing. They are taking home less than a day’s worker or a helper, but you find that people that come into the field, you have dedicated staff and when they see the difference the intervention makes to the life of a child and the life of a family… they stick to it, but we would love to be able to pay adequately,” Long-White said.

The situation, she said, was indicative of the “priority placed on children with disabilities and their needs”.

“The will to do it is just not there, neither at the government level going right down. The Government is doing things, but it is still not enough,” she said.

Long-White also called on the Government to rethink the criteria used to determine which families qualify for benefits under the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH).

According to her, numerous families have found themselves excluded due to the fact that their homes have certain amenities.

“They try to get through but they are eliminated because they might live in a house that has a bathroom that can flush; that does not mean they have the means to be able to support the child and family. Quite a number of them are not on the PATH. We have been appealing, they need to have a different set of criteria to enable persons with disabilities to be able to access the programme. Disabilities come with a lot of additional costs for a family,” she pointed out.

The CBRJ is a non-government organisation that was formed July 2011 following a merger of Rural Services for Children with Disabilities (founded in 1982) and 3D Projects (founded in 1984).