Two local groups are partnering with international non-profit, Restoring Human Independence (RHI) to offer free psychological testing for primary and high school students in several parishes.

The initiative, which is being spearheaded by local lobby group Global Charity for All and St Catherine Justices of the Peace (JP) Association, will see psychologist and community psychotherapist at RHI, Dr Lisa Hall, administering several diagnostic tests from February 5th to 25th between the hours of 8:30 am and 5:00 pm daily.

President of Global Charity for All, Justice of the Peace Cleon Porter said the demand for the sessions — which are slated to be offered to students in the St Catherine area at the Youth Innovative Centre in Edgewater Portmore — has gone beyond the parish.

“Based on the responses we are getting it’s not only going to be in St Catherine, because other schools like the YMCA Kingston wants us to come there and do their entire school population, and other schools in St Elizabeth and Manchester want us to come,” Porter told the Jamaica Observer on Sunday.

“There is a need in Jamaica for students to get tested psychologically so that they can move on to different schools. And the waiting list is very long in Jamaica and some parents have to wait for all a year to get these kinds of testing, and when they even get through it’s very expensive. So, this now is a breath of fresh air, a kind of relief for these persons,” noted Porter.

The services to be offered by Dr Hall include clinical interviews; mental status examination; vocabulary sub-tests; computation sub-tests; and Bender visual-motor gestalt test, second edition, which gives a description of visual-perceptual and motor functions.

According to Porter, the services are for students in both special needs schools and regular schools.

“In some of the general schools that are not special needs you find that you have students who the teachers and parents are realising that they are not focusing and they find learning difficult. And they display certain kinds of behaviours which are abnormal to them so they now want to make a determination, because the teachers and parents are not trained in that area, so they want confirmation to get closure about what is happening to their child.

“Someone who is trained will take the necessary steps and make some determination about what is happening, and give a referral so they [the child] can get further help,” said Porter as he pointed out that testing is in heavy demand from schools.

“One school said they have 120 students so they have to get like a day or two, we got calls from guidance councillors, we got calls from persons from Portland who want to come,” Porter added.

— Alicia Dunkley-Willis