Sun | Jun 2, 2024

Families putting disabled kids in back rooms - evangelist

Published:Tuesday | February 11, 2014 | 12:00 AM
Eric Blum (centre), dean of the University of Redlands, California, and Georgia Price (right), a volunteer from the university, make adjustments to a wheelchair for seven-year-old Dominic Brown of the Gideon Early Childhood Education Centre in Portland during the handover ceremony and distribution of 550 free wheelchairs to various organisations and groups across Jamaica at the Christian Fellowship World Outreach in St Andrew yesterday.- Jermaine Barnaby/Photographer

Fresh concerns are being raised about the manner in which many children and adults living with disabilities are treated in households across the island.

Yesterday, Evangelist Errol Rattray, president of the Errol Rattray Evangelistic Association (EREA), claimed he has seen numerous cases in which the disabled are cast aside by their families.

"I have seen with my own eyes where, when you visit some of these homes, the child who is disabled is in a little back room while the other children are treated normal," Rattray told The Gleaner yesterday during a handover ceremony at which 550 wheelchairs were provided for distribution across the island.

"For many (families), it is a matter of shame; for others, they are not properly sensitised as to how persons with disabilities are (to be) treated."

Said Rattray: "As a result, we find that we are not properly informed as to the exact number of persons who are in need … because some persons are still afraid to admit that they are disabled or that they have a relative who is disabled, but we are working assiduously to fill that gap and we are breaking that ice."

The wheelchairs were handed over to the Christian Fellowship World Outreach Church in St Andrew by the EREA in partnership with the United States-based Jamaica Free Wheelchair Mission.

"So far, the numbers we are working with show that some 20,000 persons are still in need of wheelchairs, and so our partners have promised us that they will be collaborating with us until every single person [in Jamaica] receives one," Rattray said.