Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase

“Many in­no­va­tions that shape our dai­ly lives — from text mes­sag­ing to voice-ac­ti­vat­ed tech­nol­o­gy—be­gan as so­lu­tions de­vel­oped by and for peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties. Yet sys­temic bar­ri­ers per­sist: dis­crim­i­na­tion, pover­ty, and in­ac­ces­si­ble ser­vices con­tin­ue to lim­it the par­tic­i­pa­tion of the over one bil­lion peo­ple with dis­abil­i­ties world­wide.”

An­to­nio Guter­res,

UN Sec­re­tary Gen­er­al

Every year, on De­cem­ber 3 in cel­e­brat­ing In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties. But for thou­sands of fam­i­lies across the coun­try, dis­abil­i­ty is not a theme for one day; it is their dai­ly re­al­i­ty. It is the fight to en­rol an autis­tic child in­to a school; to af­ford adap­tive de­vices for a hear­ing-im­paired teenag­er; for a grand­fa­ther who is us­ing a wheel­chair to ac­cess pub­lic build­ings; and for a vi­su­al­ly im­paired young man to find a job.

What­ev­er the dis­abil­i­ty, the prob­lem is the same—our sys­tems are not built for per­sons with dis­abil­i­ties and the bur­den to pro­vide care falls on par­ents and care­givers. Sad­ly, peo­ple with all types of dis­abil­i­ties con­tin­ue to be un­seen, mar­gin­alised, stig­ma­tised and un­der­served in our coun­try.

Prob­a­bly the biggest hur­dle to pro­vid­ing equal ac­cess to op­por­tu­ni­ties and care is the sim­ple fact that we do not have up-to-date da­ta. How is it that, in 2025, we still do not even know how many peo­ple in T&T are liv­ing with dis­abil­i­ties?

The last of­fi­cial cen­sus da­ta is from 2011—14 years ago! And it did not cap­ture many of the dis­abil­i­ties that are now more wide­ly recog­nised, such as autism, AD­HD, de­vel­op­men­tal de­lays and cer­tain learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties.

With no re­cent na­tion­al dis­abil­i­ty sur­vey and no uni­fied reg­istry, we are forced to re­ly on out­dat­ed num­bers that do not re­flect cur­rent re­al­i­ties. We know that the true fig­ures would be sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er to­day, giv­en an age­ing pop­u­la­tion and the rise in chron­ic ill­ness­es such as di­a­betes, which can lead to am­pu­ta­tions, and stroke, which of­ten re­sult in long-term mo­bil­i­ty im­pair­ments.

The da­ta is lim­it­ed, as min­istries and var­i­ous agen­cies col­lect da­ta sep­a­rate­ly and, in many cas­es, spo­rad­i­cal­ly or in­con­sis­tent­ly.

There is of­ten un­der-re­port­ing, as many fam­i­lies do not re­port dis­abil­i­ties be­cause of stig­ma or in some cas­es, a prop­er di­ag­no­sis is need­ed be­cause the dis­abil­i­ty is seen as “of­fi­cial,” as is the case with autism and AD­HD.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, adults with chron­ic ill­ness­es who have dis­abil­i­ties are not of­fi­cial­ly con­sid­ered. Con­se­quent­ly, we are mak­ing poli­cies with­out any prop­er da­ta to guide us. Thus, we do not know how many peo­ple need help, what kind of help they need and how to plan for the fu­ture.

An­oth­er ma­jor con­cern is that we treat dis­abil­i­ty like a tem­po­rary thing. While many dis­abil­i­ties are life­long, our sup­port is tem­po­rary. We have this at­ti­tude that dis­abil­i­ty is “some­thing that chil­dren will grow out of” or that “adults can man­age it.”

Thus, we might pro­vide short-term as­sis­tance with­out look­ing at the im­ple­men­ta­tion of long-term poli­cies. The dis­abil­i­ty does not mag­i­cal­ly go away up­on be­com­ing an adult. Autism does not turn in­to neu­rotyp­i­cal be­hav­iour. Down Syn­drome does not dis­ap­pear.

Dis­abil­i­ty is a life­long re­al­i­ty and un­less our poli­cies, in­sti­tu­tions and at­ti­tudes recog­nise this, we will con­tin­ue to fail our cit­i­zens who need life­long sup­port.

Two ar­eas where this at­ti­tude is most vis­i­ble are with so­cial wel­fare and health. We see it with the dis­abil­i­ty grant from the Min­istry of the Peo­ple, So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices; a child would re­ceive the grant but at age 18, it is stopped and they are re­quired to go through the en­tire process of ap­ply­ing again as an adult. We al­so see the same hap­pen­ing with health­care. The pae­di­atric clin­ics will sup­port a child but at age 18 every­thing changes.

Adults with the very same dis­abil­i­ties are now treat­ed dif­fer­ent­ly. The autis­tic boy who need­ed his par­ents’ care and sup­port while hos­pi­talised can­not sud­den­ly fend for him­self when he be­comes 18 years old.

Our health­care sys­tem does not pro­vide for his needs. Hope­ful­ly, the Min­istry of Health will ad­dress this by al­lo­cat­ing a space for adults with dis­abil­i­ties at the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, so that adults who are at the de­vel­op­men­tal age of a child can have parental sup­port 24 hours.

In­ter­na­tion­al Day of Per­sons with Dis­abil­i­ties should not be the one day we re­mem­ber the peo­ple we over­look for the oth­er 364 days. It should be the day that we ac­knowl­edge that T&T is not an in­clu­sive coun­try and there­fore we need to do some­thing about that.

Too many of our chil­dren are grow­ing up un­seen and too many adults are grow­ing old un­sup­port­ed. What bet­ter day to recog­nise that dis­abil­i­ty is not some­thing that will just go away? That we ur­gent­ly need to de­vel­op a long-term plan to pro­vide sup­port, cre­ate op­por­tu­ni­ties and en­sure equal ac­cess to re­sources for every cit­i­zen, re­gard­less of age, eth­nic­i­ty, po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, re­li­gion or class?

The Mer­ri­am-Web­ster Dic­tio­nary notes that to­day, the word “cri­sis” most com­mon­ly means “A dif­fi­cult or dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion that needs at­ten­tion.”

By that de­f­i­n­i­tion, we need to re­alise that the cri­sis we con­tin­ue to dis­miss to­day will be­come the cri­sis we will not be able to ig­nore to­mor­row.