Parents must support their children with special needs

 Overcoming stigmatisation at all levels in society is one campaign almost every civil society organisation is tackling.

From menstrual hygiene, breast cancer, HIV/AIDS to crime-related stigma; these organisations have gone to extreme lengths to create awareness to make it easier for vic­tims to be accepted in the society.

It is, therefore, strange to read about a call on parents that takes their children with special needs to Special or Care Homes to be ca­tered for and eventually, abandon them.

That is wickedness at the high­est level.

According to a report published by this paper, some parents and guardians have turned these special schools into ‘dumping grounds’ where they take their wards and leave them to their fate.

These parents refuse to visit the children for the period they stay at the facility and care less about their state of health.

The worse of all is that such parents would not even attend meeting of parents to discuss the welfare of these children that needs the support of their parents to survive.

The Spectator finds the situation very offensive and unacceptable considering the fact that these chil­dren have no hand in their forma­tion and did nothing to contribute to their present form.

The timing also make it very startling because of the several campaigns on this social canker called stigmatisation.

The truth is, we have gone past the era where a certain level of stigmatisation was allowed because the mode of transmission of certain diseases were actually not clear.

In this era, there is information everywhere on how people who had been released from detentions, people who have recovered from certain sicknesses etc should be integrated into society.

So, having overcome some chal­lenges, The Spectator wonders why parents in this age would ‘dump’ their wards somewhere.

This paper, therefore, affirms the call on such parents to rather encourage their special children so that their talents can be harnessed