Latest update April 25th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 20, 2016 News
…share knowledge with local educators
While increasing efforts are being made through the Ministry of Education to tackle subtle and not so subtle conditions that could hamper children’s learning abilities, there is always more that can be done. But this need for more to be done is certainly not unique to Guyana.
This assertion was recently made by Neuropsychologist, Dr. Marc Steed during an interview with this publication. Dr. Steed was at the time speaking specifically to the condition of autism.
Autism is a mental condition, present from early childhood, that is characterised by great difficulty in communicating and forming relationships with other people and in using language and abstract concepts.
“There is always more that we can do…whether we are in Guyana or whether we are in the United States, there is always more that can be done. There are always things that we can do better to understand children with autism and help them have a good quality of life,” said Dr. Steed, who operates out of the Utah State Hospital.
He and his wife, Professor Katie Steed, are parents of an autistic child, and they understand all too well the challenges associated with caring for such children.
“We always feel like there is more we can do, but I think we are doing better today than we were doing yesterday or even better than we were doing five years ago, so that we can continue to improve,” said Professor Steed.
The United States-based Dr. Steed and Professor Steed, together shared their expertise with local educators during recent working sessions at the National Centre for Educational Resource Development (NCERD).
And according to Professor Steed, the local educators are eager to make a difference in the lives of children who are faced with various mental challenges including autism.
“They truly want to know what they can do, because they really care about these students and they have hope that they can make a difference.”
But it is not always easy to detect conditions such as autism, according to the experts. She moreover, pointed out that a checklist is often used to determine whether a child is suffering from the mental condition.
“There might be as much as twenty-five different things on the checklist…and we want to be careful when assessing children. We want to be careful, because there are individual things that a child might have, but not because a child has one would mean that that child has autism. But if they have maybe eighteen of those things constantly, and not just during the course of one day, then we might have an issue,” Professor Steed asserted.
Among the signs manifested by a child suffering from autism is the inability to make eye contact, Professor Steed disclosed, even as she added that this sign alone does not confirm that a child is autistic. She, however, reiterated that “it might make us start to be concerned, but we would need to have multiple things on that checklist.”
Dr. Steed also made it clear that the things on the checklist must not only be identified, but also manifest with some degree of severity.
“It has to be severe enough to impact somebody’s quality of life. So if not making eye contact with someone is severe enough that it prevents them from having friends or having social relationships, you might want to look for other characteristics that might suggest that there are some problems,” said Dr. Steed.
With the support from the experts, local educators will be better poised to help detect signs that may suggest that those in their care have conditions such as autism or others that accentuate the need for special education.
According to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Member States have been urged to include the needs of individuals affected by autism and other developmental disorders in policies and programmes related to child and adolescent health, and development and mental health.
This, WHO has outlined, means increasing the capacity of health and social care systems to provide services for individuals with autism spectrum disorders and for their families, and shifting the focus of care from long-stay health facilities towards non-residential services in the community.
It also means improving health surveillance systems to capture data on autism disorders and ensuring countries are better able to diagnose and treat the condition.
Autism spectrum disorders comprise a range of development disorders which include: autism, childhood, disintegrative disorder and Asperger’s Syndrome.
According to the Centres for Diseases Control and Prevention, about one in 68 children have been identified with autism spectrum disorder. Efforts are gradually being made here in Guyana to identify and treat this condition, mainly through collaboration between the Ministries of Education and Public Health.
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