Chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties will now be able to ac­cess the Dis­abil­i­ty As­sis­tance Grant.

This is ac­cord­ing to the Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices.

It said that fol­low­ing the bud­get for Fis­cal 2019, the grant was in­tro­duced, mak­ing pro­vi­sions to al­low chil­dren with a dis­abil­i­ty to ac­cess a fixed month­ly rate of $1,500 per child.

The grant is payable where as­sess­ment of the child is ei­ther se­vere or com­plete and where the dis­abil­i­ty is per­ma­nent in na­ture.

Such as­sess­ment or cer­ti­fi­ca­tion, the min­istry said, shall come from a pae­di­a­tri­cian or oth­er med­ical prac­ti­tion­er (Pub­lic Health) au­tho­rized by the Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer for this pur­pose or from a pae­di­atric spe­cial­ist (Pri­vate Prac­ti­tion­er) reg­is­tered with the Med­ical Board of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Ex­ist­ing re­cip­i­ents, i.e., par­ents who re­ceive the spe­cial needs grant for their child will be au­to­mat­i­cal­ly tran­si­tioned to this new grant with retroac­tive pay­ments ef­fec­tive from Jan­u­ary 1, 2019.

These par­ents are not re­quired to reap­ply. It should be not­ed, how­ev­er, that where a month­ly in­come ex­ceed­ing $1,500 is paid for a sim­i­lar ben­e­fit on be­half of the child, such cas­es will not be el­i­gi­ble to re­ceive the dis­abil­i­ty as­sis­tance grant for chil­dren.

For new re­cip­i­ents, ap­ply­ing is quite sim­ple the min­istry said.

New ap­pli­cants are re­quired to ob­tain a Med­ical Re­port and Ap­pli­ca­tion form from a So­cial Wel­fare Lo­cal Board, health cen­tre or on­line at www.so­cial.gov.tt.

Once the forms are com­plet­ed fol­low­ing the med­ical as­sess­ment, the form is re­turned to the Min­istry for pro­cess­ing.

The Min­istry of So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices said it is pleased to pro­vide this spe­cial arrange­ment for chil­dren with spe­cial needs.

It said this fa­cil­i­ty came af­ter sev­er­al meet­ings and col­lab­o­ra­tion with the ad­min­is­tra­tors and health prac­ti­tion­ers of the Min­istry of Health.