Ryan Ba­choo

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

ryan.ba­choo@cnc3.co.tt

When her son was three years old, Saira La Fou­cade took him to mass one Sun­day. As the al­tar serv­er led the pro­ces­sion, swing­ing the in­cense to his side, La Fou­cade’s son be­came ir­ri­tat­ed and start­ed cry­ing and rolling around. She couldn’t un­der­stand why. Mere weeks be­fore, he was di­ag­nosed as autis­tic, but she still thought she could take him to some­thing as solemn as a church ser­vice. She was wrong. The in­cense was trig­ger­ing his autism. More alarm­ing­ly, La Fou­cade found spe­cial needs peo­ple across Trinidad and To­ba­go were suf­fer­ing through the lack of sup­port at mass­es, and it was far more than just autism.

She found peo­ple with Down Syn­drome, Cere­bral Pal­sy, Rett’s Syn­drome, Frag­ile X Syn­drome, and De­vel­op­men­tal De­lay Syn­drome were all ex­pe­ri­enc­ing the same is­sue. The Catholic church had a prob­lem. A large com­mu­ni­ty was be­ing ex­clud­ed from its mass­es.

La Fou­cade ex­plained to WE last week, “What was hap­pen­ing was a lot of fam­i­lies were go­ing to mass but leav­ing their per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties at home. So, some­times mom­my’s go­ing on Sat­ur­day night, dad­dy’s go­ing Sun­day morn­ing, or by him­self, work­ing around the en­tire fam­i­ly. Even for me, when I would go to church, it would be a max­i­mum one time for the month, as I couldn’t take my son with me. It’s too much. It’s too long, when­ev­er the con­gre­ga­tion stands, he thinks it’s time to go.”

What La Fou­cade did next would change the re­li­gious life for her son and the spe­cial needs com­mu­ni­ty in this coun­try. She launched Bethes­da—For Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties, a Catholic min­istry and reg­is­tered NGO, which pro­vides sup­port, ed­u­ca­tion, and so­cial op­por­tu­ni­ties for fam­i­lies and in­di­vid­u­als with spe­cial needs.

In June 2015, the first sen­so­ry-friend­ly mass was held at Arch­bish­op’s House. It was backed by Arch­bish­op Emer­i­tus Joseph Har­ris, and it was over­sub­scribed. Forty-eight in­di­vid­u­als with var­i­ous spe­cial needs cas­es filled the chapel. It on­ly grew from there.

Now, there are four sen­so­ry-friend­ly mass­es per month. Every first Sun­day in Fa­ti­ma, every sec­ond Sun­day in Arou­ca, every third Sun­day in Cou­va, and every fourth Sun­day at St Fran­cis, Bel­mont, all at 11 am. The mass is very dif­fer­ent from the reg­u­lar ones held in parish­es across the coun­try.

La Fou­cade ex­plained, “It’s a short­er mass. It’s a ful­ly sit-down mass. We don’t have loud mu­sic, and com­mu­nion is brought to you in­stead of you hav­ing to walk up the aisle to re­ceive it. A 45-minute mass is a long mass for us. We have not just fam­i­lies of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties, but now we have el­der­ly per­sons who want to come to our mass.”

“We start­ed sacra­men­tal pro­grammes in 2017 with train­ing for cat­e­chists; how­ev­er, this was put on hold due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, which put a pause on the project. “

La Fou­cade is cur­rent­ly work­ing on first com­mu­nion and con­fir­ma­tion train­ing for cat­e­chists across Trinidad.

A few years be­fore, in 2019, when Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don was in­stalled, he met with La Fou­cade. She re­called the meet­ing, “He met with me and one ques­tion in par­tic­u­lar stood out. He asked, ‘What is the one thing that keeps par­ents up at night when they’re think­ing about their chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties?’ I told him, the main ques­tion from my ex­pe­ri­ence is, ‘What will hap­pen to my child when I die?’ With that in mind, he gave us ten acres of land for the pur­pose of ul­ti­mate­ly build­ing a group home for the same adults so that when their par­ents die, they will have hope for them that they are some­where safe.” She reg­is­tered a non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion and now La Fou­cade wants to make use of that land.

She added, “I am re­al­ly hop­ing that we can even­tu­al­ly build our group home for adults with dis­abil­i­ties, be­cause I think even though it’s a long-term goal, it’s need­ed, even if it just starts as a tem­po­rary care in terms of Mon­day to Fri­day, 8 am to 4 pm. It might not be every day that they have to come, but if par­ents want to go out, if they want to be able to just go to the gro­cery store, or to the phar­ma­cy, or even if they need a li­cence or some­thing. We can even­tu­al­ly have that home to be able to pro­vide the sup­port that par­ents need on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis, not just in church. I al­so would hope that in hav­ing these sen­so­ry-friend­ly ac­tiv­i­ties, we’re able to raise aware­ness for oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions to have sen­so­ry-friend­ly ac­tiv­i­ties as well, and even­tu­al­ly the dream that even gov­ern­ment recog­nis­es this as a need.”

La Fou­cade saw that need arise when she took her son to have his pass­port pho­to tak­en. It took her nine months be­cause they couldn’t get him to sit still in the midst of scores of peo­ple. “The gov­ern­ment or­gan­i­sa­tions have to recog­nise that there should be a sep­a­rate day and time to fa­cil­i­tate per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. It might need to be in a sen­so­ry-friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment, be­cause you can’t have 100 peo­ple with over 100 dif­fer­ent per­fumes in the same space. I wish that there would be every month a sen­so­ry-friend­ly day, where fam­i­lies of per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties can go out and do their ac­tiv­i­ties. I keep us­ing the term sen­so­ry-friend­ly be­cause that is what is need­ed, the en­vi­ron­ment needs to be tweaked a lit­tle bit to ac­com­mo­date the needs of the per­son, who oth­er­wise would be over­whelmed by dai­ly ac­tiv­i­ties,” she added.