‘I have a few glaring thoughts that constantly occur to me,’ she offered. ‘We could do with more facilities. Transportation, for example, for the physically-challenged. Even special schools like us find it so difficult to have adapted vehicles to transport our students on wheelchairs around. The cost is so high and parents cannot afford it.
Even the public buses that take wheelchairs aboard, it is a new thing, and not widespread. We still have limited accommodations for special needs.’
The 6th Step
Fauziah asserted that the quality of available services should face regular assessment according to a set of standards.
‘How does that work?’ I asked her.
‘Let us take early childhood intervention, for example. This is where the child has been diagnosed, and special needs professionals are taking steps to give help,’ she said. ‘Everyone says this is important.’
I found out that there are families who cannot afford it. This is partly because of something that is called “means testing”, where it is determined whether a family deserves to receive any financial help to fund early intervention for their child based on monetary criteria.
‘These infants and young children require intervention so that they can be developed better. Having the EIPIC [Early Intervention Programme for Infants and Children] centres go through means testing defeats the philosophy of early intervention,’ she said.
‘Then, there is the other spectrum of special needs; the older group, as I am sure you know, are often left with fewer and fewer places to turn to. There are places such as the Eden School, St. Andrews, Metta, APSN and MINDS who take older special needs children in, depending on their cognitive levels. For the children with disabilities, there are day activity centres and sheltered workshops, and homes,’ she said. ‘But places are limited.’
‘They do seem to be, very much,’ I admitted.
She went on to talk about the above-18 services which are still lacking. So many children are left with no place to go.
‘Of course, we always try for inclusion and integration. Mainstreaming. But it is a fact of life that some will never be able to do that,’ said Fauziah.
Then she told me a piece of promising news. At Rainbow, they are looking to extend and expand their curriculum for students till eighteen years of age. Graduation would then take place at eighteen years, and not twelve. This is being planned for 2013.
‘I am happy to hear that,’ I said with enthusiasm. ‘Jan loved all his years schooling at Rainbow. Other children will be able to benefit a lot from that. I hope very much that it will happen.’
The 7th Step
We went on to talk about awareness and publicity.
‘Nowadays people are more accepting as we are “pushing” the children out,’ she said. ‘People get to know the children. They create their own publicity.’
‘What about media publicity?’ I asked. ‘I mean, I know there are televised charity events and suchlike. But what do you think the media could do to help raise awareness on autism? On special needs in general?’
‘This is actually a controversial thing,’ replied Fauziah. ‘We would like our school to be treated as a real school rather than a charity. Of course, we still need the Community Chest and such to raise funds for us. But the children deserve to be recognised as students, real schooling students.’
‘How do you mean?’ I asked.
Fauziah said she would like to see the children be treated the same as students of mainstream schools. Special Education is labelled so decidedly as a social service. Would it not be better to highlight the achievements of the students instead of simply telling people what poor things they are? That way the children could show everyone what they can do. They would feel proud and happy.
‘For example, in the Youth Olympic Games last year [2010], some of our students took part in the torch relay,’ Fauziah informed me. ‘Now, if a mainstream school had sent representatives to the Games, the television and newspapers would report such things with pride. Our students deserve that kind of recognition too.’
‘Did the media not take much notice at all?’ I asked.
Sadly, they had not.
The special needs educators are hoping this will change. Athletes and representatives from special schools are sent for the Special Olympics and the Para-Olympics, and the students win medals just like any other good sportsmen. But they do not get any recognition or cash prizes. In the first place, it is even difficult to get sponsors for them to enter these events.
The media could tell people more about the children’s successes and talents, the way they do for regular children in other schools. Special needs children deserve attention and the chance to display their gifts just as much. If one simply keeps harping on the notion that these are charity cases, poor underprivileged little creatures, it will be difficult to change people’s mindset.
I too learned that special needs educators do not like the term “underprivileged”, as it stereotypes the children and labels them.
‘All this does not help dissolve the stigma and negative ideas that people already have about “special” children,’ Fauziah said.
‘I’m blown away,’ I admitted. ‘I had no idea myself that the children were doing all these things. Olympics!’
‘Yes,’ said Fauziah with a smile. ‘It makes everyone in the school proud.’
‘They’re busy students, just like in other schools,’ I said.
‘Exactly so,’ she said. ‘We have co-curricular activities too, and these have expanded a lot. We have always had swimming and water-based activities. But now there are more, like batik painting, crafting and performance arts. And people have hardly any idea that the children are doing all these marvellous things.’
I asked, ‘So do you do any of your own publicity?’
‘The best way to do that is to bring them out,’ she said.
‘Where would you normally bring them?’ I asked.
She said that they only used to have the students use the school swimming pool, and indeed I remembered how it had been for Jan. Now the children are brought to public pools as well.
It is all
