special care for handicapped children
Photo: Elad Gershgorn
enraged parents (archives)
Photo: Eli Mandelbaum
Parents demand more aid for handicapped children
Families with disabled children dissatisfied with government's current proposal, say special needs youngsters require individual attention
Education Ministry Director-General Shlomit Amichai submitted on Tuesday a conciliatory proposition to parents of handicapped children who are in need of assistance in schools and preschools.
The new program would see an additional care assistant placed in every classroom to devote more attention to children with special needs.
Handicap Friendly
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“We will place reinforcements in the form of dozens of assistants in classrooms in which there are children in need of hypersensitive integrated treatment,” said Amichai.
The Education Ministry's statistics showing that cancelling the budget for personal assistants was not done in order to save money, but rather as an educational approach.
The statistics also show that in the last two years, the number of integrative assistants working with special education students in regular schools has grown by 39% and that there was an additional growth of 25 assistants in special education frameworks.
However, the compromise was not favorably accepted. Dozens of parents, their handicapped children in tow, demonstrated against Amichai’s proposal on Tuesday outside the Education Ministry.
The protesters demand every child be assigned a personal attendant.
Roni Ginat, father of 11-year-old Roee, a gifted pianist who suffers from autism, paralysis and blindness said, "This proposal humiliates us. These are living and breathing children who need personal attention.
“There cannot be a group helper. Our son is stricken and in a very difficult and complicated situation. Why are they sending us to demonstrate in the street in order to receive the most basic assistance?
“He needs someone to change him when he soils himself. This is the only way he won’t have to be embarrassed every time somebody else touches him.
“The time has come that they find us a solution that will allow us to sleep peacefully. I can’t see my son suffering this way,” added Ginat.
