Disability Rights Jamaica Project #64220

Quality of Life for Special Needs Youth in Jamaica

by Smile A While Foundation

Project Report | Aug 6, 2024
New Partnership To Move Knowledge Not People

By Joanne Oates | Founder

Smile A While’s new program as part of ECHO Autism will connect knowledge to children and families in Jamaica for better care.

Moving Knowledge, Not People
Earlier this year, our Founder and Executive Director, Joanne Oates, connected with ECHO Autism Project with a dream of bringing better care to children with autism in Jamaica.

We are excited to announce that we are officially opening an ECHO Autism Jamaica Program to serve the children of Jamaica.

About ECHO Autism

ECHO Autism is an organization with a mission to democratize expertise and disseminate best practices to mentor and guide communities of clinicians, educators and advocates, creating local expertise and increasing access for autistic people and their families. Both ECHO Autism and Smile A While are aligned in our vision for a world where people with all abilities are able to live their best lives when given the support they need.

The ECHO Autism model is about moving knowledge, not people. Through telementoring, ECHO creates access to high quality specialty care in local communities. Our main goals of our ECHO Autism Jamaica Program are to promptly and accurately identify autism in Jamaican children, connect them with resources and services available, and remove barriers to access – all to ensure the best possible outcomes for children and their families.

Jamaica ECHO Autism …
Joanne Oates recently signed our ECHO partnership documents and has completed the ECHO Partner Launch Training.

ECHO Autism Jamaica will be able to provide twice a month access to a team of medical professionals who will allow our team to clinically diagnose and make a game plan to care for the child.

Our goal is to open our Jamaica ECHO Autism Program early 2025. We need to have a few more pieces in place to make this happen, including establishing our expert team and coordinating efforts with partners in Jamaica to refer kids in need.

ECHO Austim will provide twice a month, 90 minute sessions to meet with an expert team and discuss particular student cases. In general, one session will support creating a strategic therapy plan for one child.

Each of these 90 minute sessions require a member from Smile A While Foundation to be there as well as the expert therapist team.

Links:

Permalink

Jun 7, 2024
Splinting Clinic Serves Special Needs Youth in Jamaica

By Joanne Oates | Founder

Our vision that every disabled child in the Caribbean leads a fulfilling life is no small undertaking, yet we believe that every step forward is one that creates impact.

In total, four therapists travelled to Jamaica to improve services for special needs youth. Our first stop was to provide a 4-hour workshop to 15 Jamaican medical professionals on how to create custom splints for special needs youth. We were excited to spend our time with a group of 15 Jamaican medical professionals and we agreed wholeheartedly with volunteer Mary Devadas when she said: “It was a wonderful experience.”

Yet, the reality of this journey also included first-hand experience about the challenges that exist to serving these youth in need, highlighting the lack of resources and knowledge gap our programs aim to overcome.

“After visiting the small and cramped orthotic clinic, we could see that limited space and older buildings are what is available for treatment,” said volunteer Debby Schwartz, a product and educational specialist for Orfit Industries America. “There is a severe lack of equipment for rehabilitation and a lack of supplies.”

Volunteer Clover Hutchinson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at the School of Health Sciences and Professional Programs of York College, said overall she noticed a lack of understanding about the depth of what Occupational Therapists do, and that gap in occupation-based interventions means that many children likely have unattended developmental needs.

This is exactly why our Interdisciplinary Team Training Series exists, to bring more education to therapists on the island! We were happy to provide that experience through our splinting workshop during this mission trip.

“One memory that stands out is how eager they were to learn,” Mary said. “They were excited about using the thermoplastics and picking our brains about other interventions to apply to their patients.”

As part of this clinic, Smile A While Foundation brought enough donated material to make about 200 custom orthotic splints! While this new knowledge and those donated supplies with certainly have an impact, this won’t be ever-lasting – and more supplies will be desperately needed.

Here’s what one Jamaica-based therapist who participated in the workshop said:

“These new items will definitely help by reducing time to make splints and I also like the fact that they can be reused once a child has upgraded from a splint. It should overall help with the functionality and aesthetics of my patients. Unfortunately, I foresee, There may be some challenges in getting these materials through the government once the donations are exhausted, due to costs of the materials.”

Smile a While Foundation donated material to make custom splints, which remained at the hospital, for therapists to use ongoing. In total, these 15 therapists serve about 30 youth each for a total of 450 special needs kids reached!

We will be working to fund more materials to send to the hospital so that these therapists can continue using this knowledge to help their patients.

Smile a While Foundation also donated 20 pairs of shoes to Negril Pediatric Clinic to pass on to the youth the program serves.

Links:

Permalink

‹ 1 2 3

About Project Reports

Project reports on GlobalGiving are posted directly to globalgiving.org by Project Leaders as they are completed, generally every 3-4 months. To protect the integrity of these documents, GlobalGiving does not alter them; therefore you may find some language or formatting issues.

If you donate to this project or have donated to this project, you can receive an email when this project posts a report. You can also subscribe for reports without donating.