Trinidad Ministry of Education & Autism
I heard the Minister of Education saying today that they are going to ensure that special needs students have the psychologists, therapists and so forth in schools to help them. How long have we been hearing that from many governments? What is more... There are no such facilities available for special needs students unless you are prepared to pay big bucks for individualized care and that care is still limited as there are NOT many child psychologists or therapists in the country. Therefore considering the huge population of special needs students how is that realistic or possible? Sounds all like politics to me.
Name: Sachi
Country:
Comments: There should be a special place built for children that have learning disabilities so they can learn at their place and not be isolated because they aren't as "Bright" As the rest.
Name: Sambroo
Country:
Comments: The truth is the Ministry of Education and those who work for it have no clue about the challenges of parents in looking for schools / teachers for special needs kids. They expect you to dump your child in an already inadequate system and the child is just supposed to cope. Heartless!
That's right Sambroo, they have no clue but that's not the half of it. Instead of being understanding the general feeling is you are supposed to just 'throw' your child in the public system and 'make it work' - crazy.
It's such a huge problem, and if you read some of these forums you realise that very little has improved in over 6 years of posts. With a problem like this, where do you even begin? We need access to affordable schools, affordable therapy, affordable support.
JB, imagine you made the first post in 2012 and we are now in 2015 and nothing has changed.
Someone left this quote from the Prime Minister for me to read:
It is actually not unique to the autism group. Other special need groups like the Blind, Deaf, Downs Syndrome and the differently able have been asking for help for years. What makes Autism unique is it takes more professionals to adequately educate and help those under the spectrum than those with other challenges. What is more is the spectrum is so wide that you can't simply put one 'bandage' and expect it to work for everyone who is autistic. In the government's / economist's eyes this represents enormous cost for a small percentage of society.