Di­ag­nosed with autism spec­trum dis­or­der, 16-year-old Rahul Nanan has made strides over the past decade achiev­ing some lev­el of in­de­pen­dence de­spite his dis­abil­i­ties.

But when COVID-19 hit and lock­down mea­sures be­gan in March 2020, the pri­vate one-on-one stim­u­la­tion ther­a­py he had been re­ceiv­ing since age nine, was no longer pos­si­ble.

He start­ed to regress.

Des­per­ate, in a bid to avoid melt­downs, his fam­i­ly took him for fre­quent dri­ves to get him out of the house. They took turns in find­ing ac­tiv­i­ties to keep him men­tal­ly stim­u­lat­ed.

Like Rahul, thou­sands of spe­cial-needs chil­dren in T&T have suf­fered dur­ing the pan­dem­ic as they face al­tered rou­tines and dis­turbed sleep and eat­ing habits due to a loss of so­cial con­tact.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia, Rahul's sis­ter Maya, 18, the founder of the Sib­lings & Friends Net­work, said she has been try­ing to help spe­cial-needs chil­dren deal with the chal­lenges of COVID-19.

She said the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of car­ing for spe­cial needs chil­dren have now fall­en main­ly on the fam­i­ly.

Rahul Nanan plays an interactive game.

COURTESY MAYA KIRTI NANAN COURTESY MAYA KIRTI NANAN

"I ap­pre­ci­ate our close re­la­tion­ship so much. Hav­ing a sib­ling with spe­cial needs helped me to ma­ture and I have al­so helped to in­flu­ence oth­er spe­cial-needs sib­lings when it comes to their broth­ers and sis­ter," she said.

Through the non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tion Sup­port Autism TT, Maya has been en­gaged in on­line work­shops to help spe­cial-needs chil­dren and their fam­i­lies. The Sib­lings and Friends Net­work is the Youth arm of Sup­port Autism TT.

"I have been home with Rahul for more than a year and we have been try­ing new things to­geth­er. He has start­ed drink­ing smooth­ies and eat­ing health­i­er. Be­fore COVID, he start­ed at­tend­ing one-on-one ther­a­py ses­sions but be­cause of the re­stric­tions he has been un­able to at­tend and this threw him off a bit," Maya said.

She had this ad­vice for rel­a­tives: "Al­ways be pa­tient and al­ways make the time for them. I spend one hour each day do­ing a stim­u­lat­ing ac­tiv­i­ty with my broth­er. Whether we do a puz­zle, read a book or play a game on the iPad. We must al­ways be pa­tient and take the time to reach these lit­tle mile­stones in life," she said.

Hire more teach­ing aides, ther­a­pists psy­chol­o­gists to help

Mean­while, the founder of Sup­port Autism T&T Dr Rad­i­ca Ma­hase said more should be done to as­sist spe­cial-needs chil­dren.

Last year the group sur­veyed spe­cial-needs chil­dren to de­ter­mine how they had been cop­ing with the pan­dem­ic.

"Nine­ty per cent of par­ents not­ed that no ad­di­tion­al sup­port mea­sures were in­tro­duced by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion to as­sist par­ents and care­tak­ers of stu­dents with spe­cial needs. Al­so, 80 per cent of par­ents stat­ed that there have not been any im­prove­ments in the mo­bil­i­sa­tion of the re­sources by the Min­istry’s Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion (SSSD) to sup­port the needs of stu­dents with learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties and oth­er spe­cial needs dur­ing this pe­ri­od."

Dr Ma­hase said it was of­ten dif­fi­cult to get a re­sponse from the SSSD.

"Of­ten the staff at the SSSD are sym­pa­thet­ic to­wards the needs of the stu­dents but do not have the re­sources to help in any sig­nif­i­cant way," Dr Ma­hase said.

The group has reached out to par­ents through a se­ries of on­line work­shops, as well as craft and sto­ry­telling videos.

De­spite these ser­vices, Dr Ma­hase said the Gov­ern­ment must move swift­ly to hire more teach­ing aides, oc­cu­pa­tion­al and be­hav­iour­al ther­a­pists as well as clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists to as­sist spe­cial-needs chil­dren.

"We have tried to help by dis­trib­ut­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al pack­ages with craft and sen­so­ry items, as well as elec­tron­ic de­vices for those chil­dren who have been at home but we need fund­ing to con­tin­ue with these projects," she said.

Dur­ing the 5th Meet­ing of the Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee on So­cial Ser­vices and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion last month, In­clu­sive Ed­u­ca­tion Spe­cial­ist Leti­cia Ro­driguez-Cu­pid agreed that the pan­dem­ic has been trau­mat­ic to many spe­cial-needs stu­dents.

The Com­mit­tee heard that de­spite re­ceiv­ing more than 5,400 dis­tress calls since the start of COVID-19, the Stu­dent Sup­port Ser­vices Di­vi­sion of the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has been op­er­at­ing at 20 per cent staffing with on­ly 23 trained pro­fes­sion­als in the unit.

Ro­driguez-Cu­pid ex­plained that the SSSD re­ceives an av­er­age of 15 dis­tress calls per day and there were on­ly 23 pro­fes­sion­al staff in the unit which com­pris­es five be­hav­iour­al spe­cial­ists, nine clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gists and nine oc­cu­pa­tion­al psy­chol­o­gists.

'Hy­brid learn­ing sys­tem has not worked'

Mean­while, Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of the Blind Wel­fare As­so­ci­a­tion Ken­neth Suratt agreed that the pan­dem­ic has neg­a­tive­ly af­fect­ed spe­cial-needs chil­dren.

He ex­plained that blind peo­ple are tac­tile learn­ers and need­ed phys­i­cal con­tact to learn.

He said the hy­brid learn­ing sys­tem has not worked for chil­dren with dis­abil­i­ties.

"In some in­stances, stu­dents in the pri­ma­ry school sys­tem are not even hav­ing video con­tact with their teach­ers; their work is be­ing sent via What­sApp and Google Class­room. Where the need to have phys­i­cal con­tact aris­es, it is just not hap­pen­ing," he said.

He not­ed that a lack of con­nec­tiv­i­ty has al­so been a prob­lem cou­pled with a lack of parental train­ing in us­ing com­put­ers and oth­er de­vices need­ed for vir­tu­al teach­ing/learn­ing.

Suratt said that con­tin­u­ous sup­port was need­ed for par­ents, care­givers and stu­dents. "This will al­low en­gage­ment in learn­ing of var­i­ous as­sis­tive tech­nolo­gies avail­able for stu­dents with vi­su­al im­pair­ment and how to ac­cess and use such with­out chal­lenges. The lack of re­sources avail­able for each stu­dent to have at home to fa­cil­i­tate vir­tu­al learn­ing for stu­dents with vi­su­al im­pair­ment. Screen time is al­so an is­sue es­pe­cial­ly for stu­dents who have glau­co­ma and/or cataract," he ex­plained.

Suratt al­so called on the Gov­ern­ment to re­open schools for stu­dents who re­quire phys­i­cal con­tact with learn­ing ma­te­ri­als.

Min­is­ter re­sponds: Eval­u­a­tion of SSSD on­go­ing

Min­is­ter of Ed­u­ca­tion Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly said that an eval­u­a­tion in­to the SSSD was now on­go­ing.

She said in Au­gust 2020 the Min­istry through the Dig­i­cel Foun­da­tion sup­port­ed the pro­vi­sion of lap­tops with as­sis­tive tech­nol­o­gy to gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed spe­cial schools.

"The Min­istry al­so pro­vid­ed stu­dents of pub­lic spe­cial schools with lap­tops. The Min­istry's Di­vi­sion of Ed­u­ca­tion­al Re­search and Eval­u­a­tion col­lect­ed and analysed da­ta on the im­pact of the blend­ed learn­ing sys­tem on spe­cial-need stu­dents through a school sur­vey ad­min­is­tered be­tween Ju­ly to Au­gust 2020 and No­vem­ber 2020," she added.

This, she said, led to the roll-out of a train­ing pro­gramme for teach­ers at spe­cial needs schools, EC­CE, SER­VOL, and main­stream gov­ern­ment and gov­ern­ment-as­sist­ed schools.

"These ses­sions ran from Oc­to­ber 20, 2020, to March 23, 2021. A to­tal of 1,960 spe­cial ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers par­tic­i­pat­ed in these ses­sions," she added.

Gads­by-Dol­ly said "While the Min­istry is com­mit­ted to sup­port­ing spe­cial-needs stu­dents who re­quire tac­tile and face-to-face com­mu­ni­ca­tion, this can on­ly be ac­com­mo­dat­ed up­on the lift­ing of COVID-19 re­stric­tions and the re­open­ing of school to pri­ori­tise their safe­ty.

"At present, 1,214 stu­dents and their fam­i­lies are re­ceiv­ing di­rect sup­port through the SSSD. The num­bers of staff have not been in­creased, how­ev­er staff have been trained to de­liv­er on­line where nec­es­sary so that there is con­ti­nu­ity of ser­vice."