Do not do it!

Kellie-Anne Brown Campbell, principal of McCam Child Care and Development Centre – Jamaica’s first inclusive early childhood institution that has children with special needs on roll, is happy that Prime Minister Andrew Holness has ordered the return of full face-to-face classes following the mid-term break in March.

Brown Campbell told The Gleaner on Wednesday that the online platform is not the optimal setting for young children with special needs and disabilities to learn effectively.

“I welcome it [the return of full face-to-face classes]. We all have our apprehensions and concerns from a safety perspective, especially in terms of the transmission of the virus, but I kind of feel as if we’re at a point where, what else are we to do? Because, from a long-term perspective – the longer we have our children out of school … many of them don’t have access to devices and they are losing out,“ she said.

She added: “Definitely, face-to-face is better for our [special needs] population. I mean the integration of technology is definitely a good thing for the children, whether the children are typically developing or not, but definitely, for our population of children who have special needs, they don’t learn well online. They don’t grasp the concepts well online and one of the biggest challenges is that they [children with special needs] can’t remain focused long enough to be listening to what the teacher tells them to do.”

Brown Campbell explained that inclusion for special needs students is not only about teaching, which can happen directly online, but also about offering physical support services of, for example, speech therapists and occupational therapists, to assist the children and their parents.

“[They need] tactile – the touch. The physical touch and so on is critical for a lot of these children. The point is that, if you have a situation where they are staring at a computer screen, it’s not necessarily going to do much for them. They need to have somebody there talking to them and tapping the shoulder and mixing things up, having movements,” Brown Campbell told The Gleaner.

SAFEGUARD LIVES

“When they are at home with a caregiver or a parent who does not really understand how to keep them focused and keep them engaged, as the teachers would, they don’t get as much out of the learning experience as if they are in the school setting,” she said.

Brown Campbell is also elated that the Disabilities Act (2014) came into effect on Valentine’s Day, February 14. She believes it is timely for the resumption of full face-to-face learning and will help to better safeguard the lives of children living with special needs and those disabled.

She also believes the act will give parents of children with disabilities and special needs more ammunition in terms of being able to advocate for their children’s rights.

“I’m happy that it’s now implemented. It’s been a long time coming, because, as we know, it’s been in the process since 2014. I’m very excited to see that it’s finally at the place where persons with disabilities will be able to capitalise on the different opportunities that are available to them, especially for the children, as it relates to education, interventions and different things to ensure that they will be able to live as close to the same type of life that that person without disability is able to enjoy,” Brown Campbell told The Gleaner.

REGRESSION

If Jamaica were to continue with strictly online classes for another period, Brown Campbell believes COVID would be the lesser evil for children living with special needs in the long run, given that studies show that it is an environment without development that creates disability in a person.

She calls on parents with special needs children to not keep their children locked away from physical school settings.

As a disadvantage of online learning, she said educators and parents will see more regression with whatever physical input they would have already provided to a child with a special needs cognitive system.

“Sometimes when our children go on holiday for summer, when they come back, you see the difference. You have to do the retraining with the behaviours and so on. So, for those children, one of the things I would say to parents is to seek help. Don’t just sit at home and say, ‘Oh, my child has a special need and I’m afraid of COVID’. The long term effect of that is going to probably be worse than if the child got COVID, and I’m being very frank!” she said.

She continued, “If you have a child with special needs and they’re just home and you are doing nothing with them, they’re getting no stimulation, they’re not getting any structure, they don’t have a routine that is being followed because parents are not trained to take care of those kinds of needs, they’re parents, so they are going to take care of their children. But, to impact the developmental and building the brain and targeting specific skills, they don’t have that training. So reach out! Seek help!”

She encouraged parents to seek help at the Jamaica Council for Person with Disabilities or the Ministry of Education and Youth or Mico Care facilities.

A specific set of persons she is calling out to seek clinical intervention are the parents with undiagnosed children so that they get their children diagnosed and enrolled in special needs programmes across the island.

“They know something is wrong, but they don’t want to accept that something is wrong. They don’t want somebody to tell them, [because] it’s hard,” she said.

Another reason she is elated about the resumption of face-to-face classes is that it will result in an increase in student enrolment at her school, and the administrators could reopen their nursery, which they were forced to close during the pandemic.