So here we are, at the end of April again. For one month, autism gets at­ten­tion with all the fly­ers and reels on so­cial me­dia. In April, every­body sud­den­ly re­mem­bers autis­tic peo­ple ex­ist. But when April fin­ish­es, autis­tic peo­ple and their fam­i­lies still have to face the dai­ly chal­lenges of life in T&T, and like al­ways, many sim­ply do their best to man­age with what­ev­er sup­port they can find.

I do not want to spend this week re­peat­ing that aware­ness is not enough. I said that al­ready, and it is true. What I want to ask now is some­thing more im­por­tant: what are we ac­tu­al­ly pre­pared to do for autis­tic peo­ple af­ter April? Not in the­o­ry or in speech­es, but in re­al ways.

A few years ago, when­ev­er par­ents and care­givers ex­pressed dis­ap­point­ment on so­cial me­dia that not enough was be­ing done for autis­tic peo­ple, the re­sponse was along the lines of, “al­lyuh make child and ex­pect the gov­ern­ment to mind dem.”

Par­ents and care­givers were made to feel like they were de­mand­ing too much rather than ask­ing for ac­cess to ba­sic rights for their chil­dren. Some peo­ple were quick to say that we have “many” poli­cies in place, but I say again, poli­cies that are not im­ple­ment­ed are just a waste of time.

One of the typ­i­cal an­swers to any de­mand for im­prove­ments and ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties has been that the coun­try has no mon­ey.

I un­der­stand that the eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion is not very good right now, but I am not buy­ing the “we have no mon­ey” ex­cuse any­more. You know why? Be­cause we find mon­ey to wine and jam while a child does not even have a school to at­tend. We place pri­or­i­ty on every­thing else but our autis­tic chil­dren. So no, the is­sue is not mon­ey.

The is­sue is wrong pri­or­i­ties. It is very easy to say that we are a de­vel­op­ing coun­try, or a less­er de­vel­oped coun­try, and use that as an ex­cuse for not hav­ing prop­er struc­tures in place. But our de­vel­op­ment sta­tus can­not con­tin­ue to be the ex­cuse. Be­ing a de­vel­op­ing coun­try does not mean we must have noth­ing. It means we have to use our re­sources bet­ter and put them where they can ac­tu­al­ly change lives.

And let us be hon­est, there are coun­tries with few­er re­sources than T&T that are still try­ing to put prac­ti­cal sys­tems in place. For ex­am­ple, Rwan­da’s Spe­cial Needs and In­clu­sive Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy in­cludes im­prov­ing ac­cess to school­ing, strength­en­ing sup­port ser­vices, and build­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of teach­ers and spe­cialised per­son­nel for learn­ers with dis­abil­i­ties.

Even Bangladesh, with far few­er re­sources than T&T, has de­vel­oped a Na­tion­al Strate­gic Plan for Autism and Neu­rode­vel­op­men­tal Dis­or­ders and tak­en part in re­gion­al ef­forts to strength­en health, ed­u­ca­tion and so­cial care sup­port, show­ing that the is­sue is not on­ly mon­ey but whether a coun­try choos­es to plan se­ri­ous­ly for autis­tic peo­ple.

One of the first places where T&T can do bet­ter is in schools. We do not have to wait on some per­fect sys­tem to be­gin mak­ing changes. If teach­ing posts be­come va­cant, then the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion should start us­ing some of those op­por­tu­ni­ties strate­gi­cal­ly so that, over time, every school has at least one teacher trained in spe­cial needs ed­u­ca­tion. That alone would make a ma­jor dif­fer­ence.

Teacher train­ing is al­so an area that can be done at lit­tle or no cost, giv­en that the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices is sup­posed to have qual­i­fied per­son­nel who can fa­cil­i­tate train­ing. Part­ner­ships with pro­fes­sion­als and NGOs can help too.

We al­so need to make pub­lic spaces eas­i­er for autis­tic peo­ple to use. Some­times it is sim­ple things that mat­ter most: clear­er signs, qui­eter wait­ing ar­eas and staff who know how to speak calm­ly and re­spect­ful­ly.

A mall, a clin­ic, a gov­ern­ment of­fice or even a pub­lic event can feel over­whelm­ing for an autis­tic per­son. We have to start think­ing about how peo­ple ac­tu­al­ly ex­pe­ri­ence these spaces and how we can up­date and up­grade our spaces. UNICEF’s guid­ance on dis­abil­i­ty-in­clu­sive spaces makes the same point: ac­cess is not on­ly about ramps and build­ings, but about prac­ti­cal de­sign and us­abil­i­ty for chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties and their fam­i­lies.

Health­care is an­oth­er area that needs se­ri­ous at­ten­tion. Fam­i­lies should not have to wait long and be stressed every time they car­ry a child for an ap­point­ment. The sys­tem needs more flex­i­bil­i­ty and bet­ter com­mu­ni­ca­tion. Staff should be trained to recog­nise sen­so­ry dis­tress, and that should in­clude aux­il­iary staff and se­cu­ri­ty guards too. Ba­sic dig­ni­ty should not de­pend on whether a fam­i­ly hap­pens to meet one kind per­son on a good day.

And we re­al­ly need to stop talk­ing about autism as though it is on­ly about chil­dren. Autis­tic chil­dren grow up to be­come teenagers and adults.

We can cre­ate ac­cess to em­ploy­ment; the OJT sys­tem is al­ready in ex­is­tence and we can ex­pand it to in­clude per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties. There are spe­cif­ic ca­reer paths for which autis­tic adults can be trained, in­clud­ing da­ta en­try, graph­ic arts and oth­er jobs that may suit peo­ple who pre­fer calmer or more struc­tured work set­tings. We can al­so of­fer em­ploy­ers in­cen­tives to hire per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties.

Let us re­mem­ber that autism does not dis­ap­pear when April ends, and nei­ther do the chal­lenges. Our com­mit­ment can­not dis­ap­pear ei­ther.

Autis­tic peo­ple do not need one month of at­ten­tion. They need a coun­try pre­pared to in­clude them every day.