Mico CARE Centre trains teachers to address autism in classroom

Mico University College Child Assessment & Research in Education (CARE) Centre is partnering with two US-based organisations to provide specialised support in the areas of speech and language therapy, occupational therapy, and autism coaching, as well as training for clinicians and teachers. The two partners are Skilled Connections, based in Atlanta, Georgia; and Caribbean Autism Support for Education (CASE), Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

In commenting on the importance of these partnerships, Dr Sharon Anderson-Morgan, director of Mico CARE Centre, said: “As the foremost child assessment and intervention agency in the country, there is always a call on us to try to find solutions to help the families and the stakeholders that we serve, so we are constantly exploring partnership opportunities like these to bring help where it is needed the most.”

With autism now being the leading presentation in the children that are being referred to the centre, CASE was recently engaged to conduct two Autism Training Workshops for teachers to expose them to various techniques and strategies to effectively teach and communicate with children on the autism spectrum. The sessions, which were facilitated by Deborah Santiago, autism coach and founder of CASE, resulted in over one hundred teachers being trained, representing all seven regions of the Ministry of Education. Both workshops, held at the centre’s Manhattan Road location, generated significant interest and were well received by the teachers who benefited. “We have learnt so much from this workshop that we can’t wait to get back to our schools to start implementing some of these strategies,” they said.

ONLINE WORKSHOPS

Other partnership initiatives with CASE included the hosting of a series of online parent coaching workshops, which began last year. The last workshop was held during Autism Awareness Month earlier this year, which saw over 250 families of children with autism benefiting from targeted coaching and guidance from a multidisciplinary panel of specialists in autism and other related areas.

Over the past year, CARE Centre has been observing a very concerning trend, with a significant number of children being screened for autism at the centre on a weekly basis.

Current prevalence data collected at the centre shows that in every 10 cases seen, at least three are autism related. As the oldest institution of its kind in Jamaica and the English-speaking Caribbean, providing diagnostic assessment and therapeutic intervention to students with special-education needs and various developmental disorders, it is incumbent on the centre to respond to the increasing prevalence of autism in Jamaica and the high demand for related services by these families.

The centre is also slated to receive further assistance from CASE as it relates to providing clinical supervision to the centre’s clinicians in the use of a new and more reliable autism diagnostic instrument, which is used internationally, over the summer period. This will be arranged through the Nova Southeastern University in Florida (NSU). The team from NSU will also be assisting in administering autism evaluations to children during this period.

The Mico CARE Centre was established in 1980 to meet the needs of children requiring special education in Jamaica and the English-speaking Caribbean, offering child assessment, diagnostic, and therapeutic intervention services for school-aged children with learning challenges. The centre resulted from a collaboration between the governments of Jamaica and the Netherlands and is the portfolio responsibility of the Ministry of Education and Youth.