PNP pledges disability fund, more resources for special needs children
Published:Sunday | March 23, 2025 | 9:55 PMKimone Francis/Senior Staff Reporter
Opposition Leader Mark Golding is proposing to establish a National Disability Fund should his party form the next Government. He is equally promising to increase spending to address the challenges of special needs children in Jamaica.
Golding, who was making his contribution to the 2025-2026 Budget Debate in the House of Representatives yesterday, said while the World Health Organization estimates that approximately 16 per cent (or 448,000) of Jamaica’s population has some form of disability, less than one per cent of the annual budget goes to addressing the needs of this community.
The opposition leader stressed that much more needs to be done to empower persons with disabilities to be fully included in all aspects of national life. Similarly, he argued that funding to support children with special needs is “woefully inadequate”.
“With my family background, I am committed to making this happen. We must always remember that disability respects no one, so we must create a society that is fully inclusive of all our citizens, mindful that any of us can become disabled at any time,” said Golding, whose father Professor John Golding pioneered Jamaica’s only fully integrated rehabilitation centre in response to the polio epidemic in the 1950s.
Jamaica’s most recent census data (2011) records disability prevalence of 3.3 per cent compared with 6.3 per cent and 4.8 per cent in 2001 and 1991 for the population five years and older. The latest (2007) available disability prevalence data for children two to nine years old as higher at 15, according to a 2020 United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report which looked at disability and education in Jamaica.
The Jamaica Council for Persons with Disabilities (JCDP) has approximately 17,000 persons registered in its database.
“The next PNP government will establish the National Disability Fund with specific allocations from the Consolidated Fund, which will be dedicated to financing initiatives to empower persons with disabilities,” he added.
CONSOLIDATED FUND
Golding said these initiatives will include funding to the JCDP; greater support for the major organisations catering to each disability group; funding for assistive technologies for persons with disabilities; improving sidewalks for use by persons with disabilities, and supporting the education of persons with disabilities at the tertiary level.
His proposal comes on the heels of a call from Dr Christine Hendricks in late February for a specific census to accurately capture the number of persons living with a disability in the country.
She said that, based on the available data, Jamaica is “a far way from reaching the number of persons with disabilities” to have them registered.
The Gleaner was unable to reach Hendricks for comment on Golding’s proposal on Tuesday.
Meanwhile, the opposition leader said the next PNP government would provide resources to place emphasis on the diagnosis of learning disabilities, and strengthen the shadow support and other measures to support the education of children with special needs and their families.
According to the Planning Institute of Jamaica’s Economic and Social Survey Jamaica 2023, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, through the Early Stimulation Programme, provided early intervention services to 3,124 children zero to six years of age across the island.
The services included physiotherapy, advanced developmental screening and evaluation, counselling, community and centre-based rehabilitation, behavioural therapy, special early childhood education and parenting education.
In August 2023, Dr Kasan Troupe, the permanent secretary in the Ministry of Education, said at that time that the ministry was working with 17 special education institutions and supported two other organisations.
She said 719 students were being supported under the partnership arrangement with the ministry expending $300 million per year for these students to access specialised services in the institutions.
She said there are 10 special needs public education institutions while at other institutions there are 15 pull-out special education classes.
She said then that approximately 500 shadows – who provide one-on-one support in classrooms – were being compensated by the ministry.