Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 29/Oct 20:49

Senator: Screen for learning impediments earlier

OPPOSITION Senator Janelle John-Bates has called for the screening of TT's infants for learning impediments at a younger age than proposed by the government. She made the appeal in her contribution to the Senate budget debate on October 27. She said an infant may not achieve their expected developmental milestones due to the way their neurons or nerve cells in the brain are wired. This can cause an impediment in the child's motor skills, fine motor skills, speech and language, social and emotional skills, and cognition (ability to understand.) "If these delays are not addressed early with targeted interventions, the severity of the developmental disability may be exacerbated, learning outcomes are poorer and children are less likely to achieve success in school and later in life," she said. "Other countries usually screen for development delays periodically when the child is between zero and three years old, so the intervention can commence as soon as possible. This is because the brain is very neuro-plastic at that age." She explained that such children's brains can adapt if given the right stimulation, to create the correct connections in the child's brain. Helpful treatment, she said, included speech, physical, occupational and behavioural therapies. John-Bates said the suggestion by the government to screen at ages four-five was too late. She also lamented the high cost to do an educational assessment at $5,000 per pupil, followed by therapy at $500 per session at perhaps four-six sessions per week. John-Bates also sympathised with the plight of the single-mother and her child who might opt to follow the government's advice to just move out if their landlord tried to add on the budget's 3.5 per cent landlord surcharge onto their rent. "The reality is the surcharge will be passed onto renters. "I would invite you to go onto one of those rental pages on Facebook and see how easy it is to find a landlord who is willing to house a mother with children. "Most of them say, 'No children allowed.' "Do you know how hard it is to find a nice, decent landlord who will accept children? Moving is simply not an option for many people." John-Bates alleged a moving time-line for the government's promised delivery of laptops to Form-One pupils, from September to the end of term one (December). "The children really getting these laptops?" John-Bates asked, then contrasted the budget's promise of 20,000 new homes in two years to an observed figure she quoted as 612 per year, which she said would be 3,000 homes in the government's five-year term. She warned that public servants are unlikely to get their ten per cent back-pay by Christmas. She based her claim on the fact that there are no funds specified in the budget documents to pay this sum. On October 15, Public Services Association (PSA) president Felisha Thomas said, "Our aim is to have your negotiations settled by Christmas so that your money will be in your pockets." John-Bates said the government has argued it must wait on negotiations before it can specify a ten per cent in the budget. "I don't buy it! I don't buy it! It makes no sense." She said the standing finance committee had seen budgetary allocations made for items such as boards that do not exist, yet nothing was allocated for the ten per cent. "Public servants, I want to apologise. You are not going to get this money by Christmas. "It is not going to happen, because if you have to negotiate and the money is not in the budget, you have to wait at least until the Mid Year Review to get the money. "So I am sorry, it is not coming before Christmas." She gave the budget a grade F, saying, "F for fluff, F for false and F for fraudulent." The post Senator: Screen for learning impediments earlier appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.