Akash Sama­roo

Sit­ting on a bench in Orop­une Gar­dens, Pi­ar­co, with her eight-year-old son play­ing in her lap, Car­la Charles could not hold back the tears ON Thurs­day.

“I just want my child to go to school.”

It seems a sim­ple enough wish. Af­ter all, ed­u­ca­tion is a ba­sic right for every child. But giv­en that her son Je­marc Di­al strug­gles with cere­bral pal­sy, it has dras­ti­cal­ly lim­it­ed her op­tions.

“There is no school for chil­dren with cere­bral pal­sy aside from Princess Eliz­a­beth and La­dy Ho­choy and both of them said there isn’t any room avail­able, so I have to stay home to see about him.”

Charles said there are pri­vate in­sti­tu­tions but the month­ly fee ranges from $2,500 to $3,500 a month. Far be­yond the means for the 27-year-old moth­er, who can­not find em­ploy­ment due to her son’s con­di­tion.

“Even if I get a job, the shifts don’t al­low me to see him dur­ing the day, es­pe­cial­ly with him not in school, there’s sim­ply no where to put him and even if I put him in a day-care, he won’t learn any­thing,” she said.

It’s dis­tress­ing for Charles to watch her on­ly child miss out each year on an ed­u­ca­tion.

“It’s very heart-break­ing to see that oth­er chil­dren could have a fair op­por­tu­ni­ty and we have to fight to get him in­to some­thing,” she added.

Dur­ing the in­ter­view, Je­marc sang qui­et­ly to him­self, us­ing a bench as an in­stru­ment and even spoke briefly to his moth­er, won­der­ing if, in fact, his cousins would eat his snacks at home.

Charles said de­spite his chal­lenges, he’s a very alert child.

“I just want him to be able to func­tion as a nor­mal per­son in so­ci­ety,” she said, tak­ing a deep breath as her tears grew longer, “with­out the world stop­ping him.”

Charles said she was grate­ful for the State as­sis­tance she re­ceives for Je­marc, which is $1,500 for the month. How­ev­er, be­cause it is the sole source of in­come, it runs out in about two weeks.

“Be­cause when I go to the gro­cery, I spend half then I go back a week lat­er and the rest done. It’s re­al­ly just to make sure he has food to eat and every­day things get­ting more and more ex­pen­sive,” she not­ed.

Charles said her fi­nan­cial con­straints mean that she and Je­marc bounce around from rel­a­tive to rel­a­tive, but she said she is tired of be­ing a bur­den to her fam­i­ly.

But her an­guish turned to anger when Guardian Me­dia asked if she be­lieves chil­dren with cere­bral pal­sy are a na­tion­al pri­or­i­ty.

“Princess Eliz­a­beth and these places still don’t have the equip­ment for the chil­dren, and they telling you this ma­chine not work­ing, that ma­chine not work­ing, even when they have to go do ther­a­py things not work­ing, so they can’t even do that prop­er­ly and then you on­ly get ap­point­ments three months apart,” she said.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, Charles and Je­marc are not alone in their strug­gle.

“Let me put it in a nut­shell, they don’t give a s**t about peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties in this coun­try,” an in­censed Phillip Mete­vi­er, pres­i­dent of the Cere­bral Pal­sy So­ci­ety of Trinidad and To­ba­go (CP­STT), said yes­ter­day.

Mete­vi­er said there are some “main­stream” schools which at­tempt to ac­com­mo­date these chil­dren, but not­ed they lack the in­fra­struc­ture to meet their needs.

“Most schools don’t have wheel­chair ramps, they don’t have ac­ces­si­ble toi­let fa­cil­i­ties, you sup­posed to have spe­cial teach­ers, aides in the school, noth­ing of the sort! These chil­dren are home, maybe one or two get through be­cause they know some­body,” Mete­vi­er said

Mete­vi­er said the so­ci­ety made a re­quest to for­mer ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ter An­tho­ny Gar­cia for a spe­cialised school for chil­dren with cere­bral pal­sy.

“I gave him a doc­u­ment, that was since 2017 and up to now, a new min­is­ter take over and noth­ing for the chil­dren,” Mete­vi­er said.

Mete­vi­er said the so­ci­ety was al­so in­formed some time back about an ad­di­tion­al grant for sin­gle par­ents who have chil­dren with cere­bral pal­sy but noth­ing ma­te­ri­alised.

“I might get licks for this but it’s al­right, I had a meet­ing with the Di­rec­tor of Grants, I sent names to him of sin­gle moth­ers, is two months now and the last time we spoke he said send back the names. I sent it back and up to now he didn’t do any­thing about that,” Mete­vi­er al­so said.

Mete­vi­er urged Guardian Me­dia to high­light their strug­gles more, say­ing there are many is­sues that go un­no­ticed.

In the mean­time, if any­one would like to of­fer Charles a job or to lend as­sis­tance to Je­marc, they can call 296-6937.