Left behind

Families across Jamaica are raising the alarm over the country’s inability to meet the educational needs of children with special needs. A growing number of children go unassessed each year, exacerbating what experts are calling a silent national crisis.

Data obtained from the Ministry of Education show that approximately 6,800 students with diagnosed special education needs are currently enrolled in the education system – 5,989 in public institutions and 811 in private ones.

Each year, nearly 1,000 children are registered for psychoeducational assessment at The Mico University College Child Assessment and Research in Education (CARE) Centre – the oldest institution of its kind in the country. However, only about 700 are assessed annually, leaving around 300 children on a growing waitlist.

Dr Sharon Anderson Morgan, executive director at Mico CARE, told The Sunday Gleaner that many of those on the waiting list are either out of school or misplaced in inappropriate settings.

“A worrying trend in Jamaica, however, is that parents often report that schools ask them not to let the child return until they have been assessed, which ought not to be done,” she said.

Eight-year-old Navardo Blackburn, whose decomposing body was discovered in an abandoned car in his Gregory Park, St Catherine community last week, was one of those children.

The young boy, who was predetermined to be autistic, had been reported missing on the weekend of May 24 after he was last seen running from a playing field in the community with siblings.

His mother, Prudence Griffiths, told The Sunday Gleaner that while Navardo was enrolled at Christian Gardens Basic School in St Catherine, administrators telephoned her requesting consultation.

She said she was told her son was unable to “stay still” and was “disruptive” and appeared to require assistance.

Griffiths said she was told to get help for him.

“Them said I have to get a school that can deal with him there,” she said.

After receiving a referral she sought from the Christian Pen Health Centre, she said she brought Navardo to the University Hospital of the West Indies, where he was enrolled in a family clinic and assigned a social worker.

Take him to Mico CARE

Griffiths said she was given a recommendation to take him to Mico CARE, where he was registered. He was four years old at the time.

“When I went to register him, they said they would get back to me. They said I have to wait my turn. I visit there more than one time and them say them not ready for me as yet. So me have to wait,” said Griffiths.

She attempted to register him at a school in Twickenham Park in Spanish Town, but was told that her son could not be registered until an assessment was done.

The mother said she met the same roadblock when she visited another school in Greater Portmore.

Navardo remained out of school for those four years.

“He was just there at home. The last time I went by Mico, they said they soon reach to me. I feel bad as a mother seeing him not in school. Every day him usually get up and say, ‘Me soon go a school, y’know; me soon go a school’,” she said, adding that Navardo constantly asked about attending school, even while struggling with his speech.

Mico said the significant demand for services fuels its backlog, noting that the average Jamaican family is unable to pay between $60,000 and $120,000 for private assessments.

Anderson Morgan said at Mico CARE, a sliding scale is used where clients pay based on their ability. Some pay as low as $2,000, she said, and parents rarely pay over $6,000.

Between 2023 and March 2025, some 2,621 children were registered for assessments across all three locations – Kingston; Ridgemount, Manchester; and St Ann – with the Kingston location accounting for approximately 70 per cent of this total.

Currently, 1,478 children await screening with 1,018 or 69 per cent of them registered at the Kingston location of the CARE Centre.

Wait time for assessment has fluctuated over the past five years, Anderson Morgan said.

She said most clients are seen within 12 months of registration, but noted that complexities sometimes affect how long they wait. Further, she cautioned that assessments do not always result in a diagnosis.

Early diagnosis

for children

For medical doctor Kimberley Gunnings-Wright, knowing that an early diagnosis for children with special needs was critical meant that waiting for an assessment date for her soon-to-be-four-year-old son Elijah Wright from Mico was not an option.

She said prior to becoming a parent, she would often refer patients to Mico, but observed over time, that it took a long time for them to have the assessment done.

So when Elijah exhibited signs of having autism spectrum disorder (ASD), she paid thousands to have a private assessment done.

She said getting him enrolled in a special needs school was where her troubles began. Elijah was not severely autistic, she said, but noted that she and her husband wanted him in an environment where he could get the help needed.

She said several special education schools reported being at capacity, sharing that Elijah has been on a waiting list for more than a year at one of these institutions.

The education ministry said Jamaica follows the internationally recommended teacher-pupil ratios for segregated settings of 1:16 for students with learning disabilities and 1:3 for students with ASD and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) – one of the most common mental disorders affecting children.

ADS, on the other hand, is a condition related to brain development that affects how people see others and socialise with them. This causes problems in communication and getting along with others socially. The condition also includes limited and repeated patterns of behaviour.

For schools not at capacity, Gunning-Wright recalled, a shadow was required to accompany her child.

A shadow is typically a trained professional who provides individualised support to help children succeed in school or other settings.

$350,000 per term

“We’ve finally found a school that said it could take him. It’s a privatised school and they are very expensive. It’s $350,000 per term and that is not including therapy. That is the other struggle,” she said.

“Most of the children, for them to facilitate learning, they need to go through what we call ABA therapy, occupational therapy and speech therapy. They are very expensive at $8,000 an hour for occupational and ABA therapy. That’s very expensive because they do need more than one hour per week,” she said.

Therapy with speech pathologists costs $7,500 for 30 minutes.

Gunnings-Wright asserted that in addition to being expensive, therapy is difficult to access, noting that securing a space was a nightmare.

At one year old, Elijah’s speech had regressed until he stopped talking, she said, mentioning that she was unable to secure an appointment with a therapist. She said she and her husband have since employed an English teacher with Cuban background to assist their son.

“Otherwise, I could not get a speech therapist. For years I was trying. Their schedules are tight, you can’t get an appointment, and when you do get one, it’s not affordable for most people, and I don’t know of any subsidies from the Government for therapy, per se, but I could be wrong,” the doctor said.

“It’s hard. Educating them is almost an impossible task in Jamaica. With one child and no other bills, you’d probably have to make $350,000 to $400,000 per month. And even if we make that it’s a utopia. There’s no where on this planet where you are not paying any other bill,” she said.

At times, fatigue, frustration and anger set in, Gunnings-Wright said, calling living in Jamaica with a special needs child “insane”.

“My child was born in Jamaica like every other child here. He is Jamaican. It is his right to have quality education where he is born. He deserves that. I’m not begging for anything to be done for free. I’m saying make it accessible. Make it so that they are able to find a school. Make it so that therapy is accessible,” she stressed.

A third mother with whom The Sunday Gleaner spoke but who did not want to be identified said she has had to repeatedly change schools for her six-year-old son, who was last year diagnosed with autism.

The small business owner said after Mico informed her about the wait time, she sought a private assessment, for which she paid $40,000.

She said the late diagnosis was done after she was told by her son’s teacher that “she could not manage him” and that he refused to stay inside his class. She said the class had close to 40 students.

Up to that time, the child was non-verbal.

“Him never know him name, never talk, nothing, and all him did want to do is walk ‘bout the school,” the mother said.

Frustrated, she said she subsequently moved her son to another school, but after no improvement, she enrolled him at a St Andrew-based school with a smaller population and specialised to work with his diagnosis. She said since then, he has improved “dramatically”, is able to state his name, identify letters and numbers and has started writing.

The Ministry of Education told The Sunday Gleaner that special needs services for children are provided across 99 locations islandwide, including private partnerships.

The ministry said in some cases, it pays up to $310,000 per student per year, and in others, it pays for school operations and special services such as physiotherapy, speech therapy, among other things.

The ministry said cases which come to its Special Education Unit (SEU) are usually in need of various forms of support, including placement in school, shadow support, information, and counselling/parental support.

At the cut off time for registration in July 2024, the ministry said it received more than 1,000 requests. Additionally, it said up to May 16, 2025, some 712 shadows had been engaged to assist special needs students.

The shadows are paid $60,000 per month by the ministry, which amounts to the then weekly minimum wage of $15,000, prompting parents in some instances, to pay an additional sum.

The ministry said it is difficult to determine if the number of shadows engaged is enough because children are constantly being diagnosed.

It said since July 2024, the Special Education Unit received applications for assistance for just over 500 children with ASD. A breakdown of the requests showed that shadow support was dominant with 310 applications compared to 197 for placement in schools.

It also revealed that 113 of the requests for support were for children diagnosed with mild autism, 129 moderate and 81 severe.

Education Minister Senator Dr Dana Morris Dixon acknowledged that enough is not being done for special needs children in Jamaica but said the current administration is doing more than any of its predecessors.

She said local and international data indicate that “this issue of children with special needs is going to get worse”.

“Every teacher is going to see children with special needs in their class and we’re already seeing that as a reality. Children on the spectrum, the numbers are expanding significantly around the world,” she said.

She said as a first step, the Government is investing in diagnostics, mentioning a $180-million centre to be established at the College for Agriculture, Science and Education. She said this is to ease the challenges being faced at Mico, which include a shortage of professionals who can conduct assessments.

There are approximately 223 children on Mico’s waitlist who present with symptoms of autism.

In 2024, some 75 children were diagnosed with autism across all three branches of Mico, accounting for 12 per cent of all assessed cases.

“The shortage of staff for behavioural, occupational and speech therapists within the island and the CARE Centre needs to be addressed. This would give the centre the ability to offer the type of intervention treatment service that is much needed by our clients,” Anderson Morgan urged, while attributing backlog to “inadequate human resources”.

She noted that Mico’s current staffing is unable to meet the demand for timely services and said this is compounded by the centre’s aim to meet its mandate which is not limited to assessments but also includes public education, research and intervention.

Morris Dixon said the education ministry has asked The University of the West Indies (UWI) for support, disclosing that the institution is providing new courses for special needs assessment, diagnosis and treatment.

She said the Government is also working with The UWI to expand programmes offered on speech pathology, behaviour and occupational therapy.

Further, she said the ministry has expanded the number of shadows provided for children and doubled the stipend for shadows.

Morris Dixon said in summer 2024, the ministry partnered with UWI to assess approximately 2,000 students who sat the grade five component of the Primary Exit Profile exam and performed below standard. She said the results were sent to their schools.

“So we are testing them there just to make sure that we understand what’s going on with them why they are at the lower level in terms of performance,” she said, adding that the assessment will continue this summer.

“But grade five is late. We want to test much earlier and so we’re going to have to be working with parents to help them understand this dynamic because as the numbers go up, they’re going to need more [support],” she said.

Morris Dixon further added that scholarships are available for the additional training of teachers in the field.

kimone.francis@gleanerjm.com