With the new school year approaching, transport – not school supplies – remains the most pressing back-to-school need for families of children with disabilities, according to the Barbados Council for the Disabled (BCD).
At Monday’s official handover of the council’s newly acquired school bus at Harambee House, Garrison, operations manager Roseanna Tudor said the organisation had not seen an increase in requests for back-to-school assistance.
“Actually, nobody,” she said when asked whether families had been reaching out for help with back-to-school needs.
She suggested that many families may already be receiving support for educational materials from other organisations.
“The number one [request is] transport to get the children to school. More than anything else, that’s what the original [bus] did. The one bus cannot meet the needs of all those children who need to get to school.”
Tudor said that reality made adding the new bus especially significant, as the council frequently has to turn away families because of limited seating capacity.
“So I’m satisfied that others are supporting their material needs… which is why this bus is so important to us, because it hurts when we have to say, ‘No, we don’t have space on a bus to take a child to school.’ And that’s the key.”
While requests for books and school supplies have been limited this year, she noted that assistance with school fees has been another major area of need, particularly for children attending special schools.
“Support to pay for their school fees because quite a few do go to special schools, so support in paying for school fees is another critical need for them after transportation.”
She explained that when those requests are received, the council seeks help from its funding partners.
“What we would do is when any queries come through us for that, we would go to our funders and present the need to them and most of the time they help them.”
Drawing on previous years, Tudor said reliable transport and financial assistance often determine whether a child can attend school consistently and whether parents can remain employed.
“It just shows that when children have disadvantage, it’s not easy to just jump on a bus at a bus terminal. They have to have this transportation picking them up from school, and it does help because parents are able to go and work.
“Now, if a child can’t get to school, the parents or the caregivers cannot work. That means it’s a heavy financial burden on them, which is why most of the time assistance in their school fees and transportation are the two main areas that we know have benefited children with disabilities in the past.”
Although the new bus will primarily serve school-aged children, Tudor said it will also assist students in tertiary education when resources allow.
She added: “Which is why this bus is gonna be really heavily utilised once again.”
(LE)
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