19 years old and never gone to school

Nineteen-year-old Jellisa Williams, who has club foot and suffers from seizures, has never sat in a classroom in all her life.

Her mother, Brenda Ramsay, told The Gleaner that she was not aware, two decades ago, of affordable options for specialised care for her disabled daughter.

It is a painful but not unfamiliar reality of some Jamaican families with disabled children caught in the vortex of poverty.

That crisis is often amplified in remote rural communities, where access to, and awareness of, interventions is limited or non-existent.

After delivering Jellisa, the last of nine children, at the Savanna-la-Mar Hospital on December 12, 2002, the baby was immediately taken to the Bustamante Hospital for Children. When the infant was returned to Ramsay, she was told to pursue follow-up treatment in the capital, Kingston.

“Them do an operation. Mi did fi reach back up there with her, but I didn’t have the money to bring her back up there,” Ramsay, who is a domestic helper living in Westmoreland, said.

“I need a lot of help with her because from she born, she don’t go to school because I don’t have it.”

Given the gravity of poverty, Ramsay, the mother of nine said she had no other choice but to keep Jellisa at home.

Adult diapers, which Jellisa still wears because she has bladder-control difficulties, cost the family at least $8,000 monthly.

Her sister, Treven Williams, in a tearful Gleaner interview, described the ordeal of coping with Jellisa’s clubfoot – where the foot turns inward or upward – as well as a neurological illness.

“This situation, it no easy. Months [we’re] at hospital ‘cause sometimes she have all seizure weh next to death. Sometime she deh inna di house all right, and then now she just start jump, jump, jump. We affi deh a hospital every month wid her,” Treven said.

The cost of transportation from the rural district of Culloden, where they reside, is another deterrent for the family to get help for Jellisa in Kingston.

Although she’s beyond enrolment age for secondary school, Jellisa said she still wants to get a shot at education and to be trained as a “phone doctor” – her colloquial term for a cell phone repair specialist, a skill her siblings say she has honed.

“You see if your phone nah work, just give her, and she sit and figure out how fi fix it,” said Sheripha Murray, another sister, who described her disadvantaged sibling as well-behaved, loving, and child-like.

The Reverend Arthur Taylor, chairman of the Combined Disabilities Association, said in a Gleaner interview on Wednesday that Williams’ dreams of becoming a phone technician can still be realised.

“The family can still try the Abilities Foundation and see if it’s possible for her to get any remedial lessons and training at her age,” Taylor said.

He also warned that with the new Disabilities Act coming into effect on February 14, parents could be sued by their children for denying them the right to an education.

“The law is now here. All underage disabled persons are entitled to education. They are entitled to all the rights other persons do enjoy,” Taylor said.

Taylor said Williams could have also benefited from education grants through the Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities and contributions by the Ministry of Education and Youth.

“Club foot should not have prevented her from going to school! That’s really, really bad!” said Taylor.

Marcus Eubanks, a neighbour, has committed to take Jellisa for treatment for free whenever she is scheduled to go to the clinic or hospital.

Eubanks said he also tries to relieve the stress borne by the mother and sisters by buying bandages, lunch, and phonecards when she goes to the clinic or hospital.

He said one of his biggest concerns about Williams is whether the deformity could still be resolved through surgery at her age.

“If there’s any doctor out there who can help her with her physical needs and other needs that she has, we would appreciate it,” he said.

Persons interested in assisting the family can make contact at 876-359-0089 or 876-587-7169.