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Caregiver recommends developing centre for persons with severe disabilities
Acting-Sister-in-Charge at the Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre, Candace Kewley, believes that there is a need for a centre which will provide care for adults living with a disability.
The Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre has a dormitory and daycare unit for children from nine months to 16 years old.
Headed by a Sister-in-charge along with a team of skilled nursing assistants, nurse aides and patient care assistants, the children receive rehabilitation care such as occupational and physical therapy on a daily basis.
But there are no other facilities that provide care for older persons whose disabilities are so severe, that they are in need of the assistance of others.
“Our age limit is 16-years-old and our services are for a day-care setting. Therefore, when it’s time to discharge them we cannot let them go because there isn’t another facility to send them to.
Although there are homes for which take care of persons living with disabilities, the Acting-Sister-in-Charge lamented that these facilities only take in semi-dependant persons.
A differently able child being exposed to a fun rehabilitative routine
As a result, the Ptolemy Reid Rehabilitation Centre now has resident persons because these individuals are profoundly disabled.
There are six residents whose families abandoned them at the centre.
“We have a resident who has been here since the 1960s and is the oldest resident at the centre. One of our residents has been here since she was five years old. Her mother brought her and said she is coming back; she’s just going to get coffee. However, that mother never returned and that resident is now 27-years-old,” said Kewley.
In spite of the challenges faced by the centre, services of education are provided through the Harold B. Davis Special School or regular public schools once the child meets the accessibility requirement of the school.
“What pushed us to provide these services is the fact that we look at society and see the struggles persons living with disabilities have to endure but, there is a need for these persons to be educated and be a part of society.”
She added that the centre has reached out to the Government and other Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO) to have this recommendation become a reality.
“It is very hard for an NGO to finance this initiative but we are hoping that persons can put their heart in, along with the Government to start off probably small to make this a reality.”
Nevertheless, caregivers at the centre made a call for society to embrace persons living with society and understand why a person is in such a situation so that they can be better equipped with the knowledge so as to deal with such individuals.
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