NGOs: more professional guidance needed for parents of disabled children

The Malta Federation of Organisations for Persons with Disability (FOPD) this evening presented a set of 50 proposals to the parliamentary committee for social affairs, and emphasised the need for better guidance and education for parents on how to deal with their children’s disability especially in the early years.

Federation president, Marthese Mugliett stressed that there was a great need for a multidisciplinary team in schools to help guide parents of children with a disability. “Many parents don’t know where to go and don’t know how to help because they have nobody to guide them,” said Mugliett.

This was highlighted in the story of a particular individual who the federation said had been through the local educational system only to be given a certificate stating “that she could be a cleaner” after completing a course at MCAST.

This, said Mugliett was why there was the need for parents to be guided on how they should go about making choices for their children. Government MP Deo Debattista said he was in agreement with this point and suggested that LSA’s should receive specialised training to prepare them for deal with different types of disabilities rather than adopting a one size fits all approach.

Mugliett said that the federation had drawn up the list of proposals which it wanted to discuss with the committee and had decided to do so because the proposals fell under the remit of a number of different ministries and departments, which they hoped the committee could pass on to the respective ministries. Committee chairperson Anthony Decelis suggested that once the proposals have been heard, the minutes be taken down and passed on to the relevant ministries in order to setup working groups to follow up on each issue.

Another point which was raised was the fact that people with a disability were not able to vote in a free way since Malta does not have mechanisms in place that allow for this to happen. Moreover, it was also pointed out that there are still very long waiting lists for services given to people with a disability.

Joann Scerri, president of down’s syndrome association, lamented the fact that a number of parents were struggling to pay for services associated with the care of their children, many of which she said are not readily available free of charge.

Decelis asked about feedback on the fact that the government had started to enforce a law that states that 2% of the workforce must be made up of people with a disability, with the federation saying that while improvements had been made there was still more that needed to be done in order to better coordinate initiatives by different ministries.

Members of the committee were also told that despite a number of initiatives, there will still a number of schools and departments are not accessible and that more needed to be done by the Planning Authority to ensure that access to people with a disability is not blocked in areas where works were taking place.

When asked how Malta is performing when compared to other countries, it was said that a lot of progress has been made over the past four to five years, however the country is still lagging behind on issues of education and support for parents especially in the early years. “The biggest problem is that there is still a one size fits all mentality. Once this has been fine-tuned this will be significantly better.”