Cherisse Moe

Twelve-year-old John-Paul Cabral has big plans for his fu­ture. He hopes to pass for his first choice, St An­tho­ny's Col­lege, when the re­sults of the Sec­ondary En­trance Ex­am­i­na­tion (SEA), are re­leased in Ju­ly. He al­so wants to be a child psy­chol­o­gist so that he can help chil­dren lead bet­ter lives. John-Paul is a spe­cial-needs child. He suf­fers from at­ten­tion deficit hy­per­ac­tiv­i­ty dis­or­der (AD­HD)-a prob­lem with inat­ten­tive­ness, over-ac­tiv­i­ty, im­pul­siv­i­ty, or a com­bi­na­tion. Doc­tors are not sure what caus­es it but AD­HD af­fects about three to five per cent of school-aged chil­dren. It af­fects boys more than girls. Most chil­dren with AD­HD al­so have at least one oth­er de­vel­op­men­tal or be­hav­iour­al prob­lem-John-Paul is one of them. He al­so suf­fers from a rare dis­ease called neu­rofi­bro­mato­sis (NF1) -an in­her­it­ed dis­or­der in which nerve-tis­sue tu­mours (neu­rofi­bro­mas) form in the skin, bot­tom lay­er of skin (sub­cu­ta­neous tis­sue), nerves from the brain (cra­nial nerves) and spinal cord (spinal root nerves).

John-Paul, who's de­scribed as an in­tel­li­gent child, is a for­mer stu­dent of Su­jo's Pri­vate School in Wood­brook. While he's look­ing for­ward to at­tend­ing a nor­mal sec­ondary school in Sep­tem­ber, his moth­er, Char­maine Cabral, is wor­ried that he may not fit in.

She says John-Paul, who al­so has co-or­di­na­tion prob­lems, re­quires spe­cial at­ten­tion to func­tion at his best. "What does the sec­ondary sec­tor hold for him? Do I put him back in pri­vate school again? Where is the gov­ern­ment help­ing with this?" she asked.

"If he pass­es for St An­tho­ny's Col­lege, I have to ask the prin­ci­pal if his spe­cial needs will be met. What is there to fa­cil­i­tate him?"

The Gov­ern­ment re­cent­ly an­nounced grand plans to build more spe­cial-ed­u­ca­tion schools to cater ex­clu­sive­ly for chil­dren with spe­cial needs. It al­so plans to in­te­grate spe­cial stu­dents in­to the reg­u­lar school sys­tem. Cabral be­lieves those plans are emp­ty promis­es. She says there has been no word on the spe­cial ed­u­ca­tors, ther­a­pists and spe­cial­ists need­ed to staff these in­sti­tu­tions. "There is no sup­port, no help from the gov­ern­ment sec­tor. You can't just say things and don't de­liv­er," she lament­ed.

"It's very frus­trat­ing, be­cause it's not that he can­not learn. It's just that he can­not learn in the main­stream. He is very bright, but I'm afraid that they will they treat him like he's a lost cause, be­cause he func­tions dif­fer­ent­ly...It has noth­ing in place for these chil­dren to thrive. Cabral, a sin­gle moth­er, dug deep in­to her purse to en­sure her son got the best pri­ma­ry-school ed­u­ca­tion. His ed­u­ca­tion­al ex­pens­es, she says, were well over $4,000 a month. "I'm scrap­ing by. Every­thing for him is ex­pen­sive," she said.

"Even his med­ical bills have wiped out my sav­ings. He has had five surg­eries on his right leg so far. His last surgery cost $30,000."

Spe­cial ed­u­ca­tor Ruth Thomas teach­es 111 stu­dents at the Ser­vol Spe­cial School, East Dry Riv­er, Port-of-Spain. She has first-hand ex­pe­ri­ence of deal­ing with chil­dren with spe­cial needs. Her pupils range in age from five to 24 and have been di­ag­nosed with a myr­i­ad of dis­eases in­clud­ing autism, men­tal ill­ness­es, at­ten­tion-deficit dis­or­der and cere­bral pal­sy. "These chil­dren are in dire need of help. Gov­ern­ment should be more aware of what's hap­pen­ing," she said. "All we have been hear­ing are words."

Equal ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties

Thomas says spe­cial-needs teach­ers have long been call­ing on the ed­u­ca­tion min­istry to do a bet­ter job to pro­vide their stu­dents with equal ed­u­ca­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties. She says while she wel­comes gov­ern­ment's move to in­te­grate the stu­dents in­to pub­lic sec­ondary schools, there need to be sys­tems in place to en­sure they get the at­ten­tion and care they re­quire. "The ma­jor­i­ty of teach­ers have not been trained to han­dle these chil­dren. They do not even know the the­o­ry, much less re­al-life ex­pe­ri­ences," she ex­plained. Thomas be­lieves that, "re­al­is­ti­cal­ly, some chil­dren might be able to go to nor­mal schools, and some just can't." She says par­ents must al­so take greater re­spon­si­bil­i­ty when it comes to train­ing and de­vel­op­ing their spe­cial-needs child. Some par­ents, she says, al­low their chil­dren to "do what­ev­er they want." She added: "In­ter­ven­tion is not tak­ing place ear­ly enough. When some peo­ple recog­nise the child has spe­cial needs, they keep them at home and say the child can't learn.

Some­thing as sim­ple as man­ners they don't have. We have to try to re­train that child who is al­ready sea­soned in their ways. It makes our job as a fa­cil­i­ta­tor more dif­fi­cult. "I have al­so found that a lot of fa­thers turn their backs on these chil­dren, and so the moth­ers are their on­ly sup­port. Some moth­ers just can­not cope." Ser­vol prin­ci­pal Mar­garet Adams-Roberts con­curs. Roberts, 60, has been deal­ing with spe­cial-needs chil­dren for the past 41 years. The moth­er of an adopt­ed hear­ing-im­paired girl, who is now mar­ried with three chil­dren of her own, she says par­ents need to love their chil­dren in spite of their chal­lenges. She says many of her stu­dents come from bro­ken homes. Some par­ents, she notes, are ashamed of their chil­dren be­cause they do not see them as nor­mal. "They re­main in de­nial. Par­ents need to ac­cept their chil­dren. Those who are ac­cept­ed, you see a great dif­fer­ence with them. Take them out. Do things with them. Make them feel wor­thy," she ad­vised.

"Par­ents must do bet­ter. The gov­ern­ment must do bet­ter."

Min­is­ter: We will de­liv­er

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Tim Gopeesingh as­sures that gov­ern­ment will de­liv­er. He says his min­istry is work­ing to pro­vide bet­ter for spe­cial-needs chil­dren, who he says com­prise 30 per cent of stu­dents in the school sys­tem. Five spe­cial-ed­u­ca­tion schools, in­clud­ing one in To­ba­go, are be­ing de­signed. Gopeesingh says 22 schools (12 gov­ern­ment and ten pri­vate) cur­rent­ly cater to 2,500 spe­cial-needs chil­dren, "but we need to do more." He says gov­ern­ment will al­so im­ple­ment the "in­clu­sion" mod­el of ed­u­ca­tion, as in­ter­na­tion­al stud­ies show it helps to boost the self-es­teem and so­cial­is­ing skills of spe­cial-needs stu­dents.

Un­der the in­clu­sion mod­el, stu­dents with spe­cial needs spend most or all of their time in class­rooms with chil­dren with­out dis­abil­i­ties. "For too long, spe­cial-needs chil­dren were ig­nored. I'm hold­ing dis­cus­sions with pro­fes­sion­als in the field to un­der­stand what is need­ed to go for­ward and for us to be able to de­tect ear­ly on those stu­dents with spe­cial needs," he said, in an over­seas in­ter­view, on Tues­day.