Rad­hi­ca De Sil­va

Se­nior Mul­ti­me­dia Re­porter

rad­hi­ca.sookraj@guardian.co.tt

Lec­tur­er at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and a na­tion­al award re­cip­i­ent Dr Jerome Teelucks­ingh has called for the es­tab­lish­ment of spe­cial schools by the gov­ern­ment to cater to both mi­grant chil­dren and lo­cal chil­dren who are on the autism spec­trum.

Speak­ing at an ori­en­ta­tion pro­gramme held at Rahul's Club­house in Mara­bel­la, on Sun­day, Dr Teelucks­ingh ex­pressed con­cern over the lack of prop­er ed­u­ca­tion op­por­tu­ni­ties for many chil­dren.

He said Rahul's Club­house cur­rent­ly ac­com­mo­dates over 75 chil­dren who have been re­ject­ed from pub­lic schools and had no ac­cess to for­mal ed­u­ca­tion. He ap­plaud­ed the vol­un­teers at the club­house for their pa­tience, love, and un­der­stand­ing, which he de­scribed as the cor­ner­stone of the or­ga­ni­za­tion.

Dr Teelucks­ingh em­pha­sized the need for gov­ern­ment sup­port for or­ga­ni­za­tions like Rahul's Club­house and Sup­port Autism T&T, par­tic­u­lar­ly in pro­vid­ing child psy­chol­o­gists and ther­a­pists.

He stressed the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion for all chil­dren, ir­re­spec­tive of their back­ground, to pre­vent their in­volve­ment in neg­a­tive so­cial ac­tiv­i­ties.

Mean­while, Founder of Sup­port Autism T&T, Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase, an­nounced that over 50 in­di­vid­u­als had been ac­cept­ed in­to the sec­ond co­hort of Sixth Form vol­un­teers, who will be trained to be­come ad­vo­cates for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties.

Dr Ma­hase, a re­cip­i­ent of the Cha­co­nia Medal Sil­ver, for her role in ed­u­ca­tion, ad­vo­ca­cy and vol­un­teerism said they planned to ex­pand their ser­vices but need­ed as­sis­tance from the gov­ern­ment.

"So far we have been train­ing fa­cil­i­ta­tors and they have been do­ing coun­selling ses­sions with­in the group ses­sions. We do hope to get a ful­ly pro­fes­sion­al coun­sel­lor as well as a ful­ly func­tion­al speech ther­a­pist and oc­cu­pa­tion­al ther­a­pist be­cause there is a de­mand for it," Dr Ma­hase ex­plained.

She high­light­ed the grow­ing de­mand for ser­vices, with more than 75 autis­tic chil­dren ac­cess­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al pro­grams at Rahul's Club­house every week.

"Chil­dren par­tic­i­pate in group and in­di­vid­ual ses­sions, as ther­a­py, pri­vate tu­tors, and schools are of­ten fi­nan­cial­ly out of reach for many fam­i­lies," she said. Dr Ma­hase not­ed that more than 60 per cent of the chil­dren at the club­house had been ex­pelled from main­stream schools due to be­hav­iour­al is­sues, mak­ing Rahul's Club­house their last re­sort for ed­u­ca­tion­al sup­port.