CARE-Belize promotes rehab services
It’s an organisation that’s new to the N.G.O. scene, but is already proving to be a forceful advocate for disabled Belizeans, particularly those least able to help themselves. Patrick Jones reports.
Dolores Godfrey, Director, CARE-Belize
“CARE does work with physically disabled children. Our focus is very narrow, we work only in physical rehabilitation and only with children zero to six year old.”
Patrick Jones, Reporting
The half-day workshop brought together over a dozen professionals from various organisations to discuss how they can pool their resources for the benefit of children with special needs. Director of the N.G.O. CARE-Belize, Dolores Godfrey, facilitated the seminar.
Dolores Godfrey
“We are informing them about our work. CARE-Belize is a very young organisation, we know that many professionals still don’t know about us, and we need to tell them about ourselves and to learn about them and hopefully it will lead to better networking.”
But while working together is a good way to address the plight of children with disabilities, Godfrey says perhaps the largest obstacle they have to overcome is public attitude toward the disabled.
Dolores Godfrey
“First of all, there is a big emotional cost to dealing with a child that has special needs. There is financial cost, many parents might decide to quit work and stay at home to take care of this child, immediately having an impact on their finance. Then there is the attitude of the rest of the community toward their children that makes the whole work of parents even harder.”
Director of the Department of Human Services, Ava Pennil, says while the efforts of CARE-Belize are commendable, the entire community must become involved.
Ava Pennil, Dir., Department of Human Services
“A child is everybody’s business. And a special child or special needs child should be everybody’s business. So CARE will work in communities, they would do community-based rehabilitation working with families and working with communities trying to help the communities to know what their responsibilities are.”
“The community at large has a role to play. They should be given jobs in the community just like everybody else. They should attend school like everybody else, they should be allowed to recreate, and should be allowed to go to parks, playgrounds, and things just like other children.”
Godfrey says while that may be the ideal situation, another barrier disabled children face is access to playgrounds and public spaces not equipped with wheelchair access.
Dolores Godfrey
“We’ve got a long way to go. We are hoping that CARE can perhaps be a catalyst to get some change. That is one purpose of getting together with all these people, see how we can all together to work on it.”
Ava Pennil
“CARE is looking at adaptive aids and those things that will make the child better able to adapt. The thing with playgrounds and like that, the physical aspects of the playground, then CARE, along with the department and other stakeholders, as well as parents, will have to approach the municipalities or wherever to make sure that the infrastructure is in.”
Patrick Jones for News 5.
