By Prince Acquah
Cape Coast, Dec. 25, GNA – The Challenged Children Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation in the Central Region catering for differently abled children, has called for policy interventions to adequately give children with special needs access to quality and affordable health care and education.
Mrs Reachel Adjottor Adom, the Founder of the Foundation, observed that there were not enough policies targeted at giving such children comfortable lives and to alleviate the burden on their parents who were mostly single mothers.
She made the appeal when the Foundation held a Christmas party for the special children under her care and their mothers at Abura New Site in Cape Coast.
Maame Efua kids Foundation, an Accra-based NGO, joined the Challenged Children Foundation with a donation of assorted items and food to support and celebrate the occasion with them.
The items included rice, cooking oil, sardines, tomato paste, diapers, paper towels, bottle water, milk, drinks, toiletries, clothes, and shoes.
The elated children engaged in activities such as dancing competition, musical chairs, and singing.
Mrs Adom noted that it was financially and physically draining to handle the education and health of children with conditions such as cerebral palsy, autism, down syndrome, and paralysis, a situation which policies must address.
“Some conditions are seen as normal but it takes a whole community to take care of such children and so, we need government to come to the aid of parents of children with special needs.
“We need most of these conditions rolled roll onto the National Health Insurance Scheme as well as an intervention that will ensure a more inclusive education system which does not discriminate against them,” she said.
Sharing some of her success stories, Mrs Adom narrated how many depressed mothers neglected by their husbands and families had been empowered to fend for themselves.
“We have a teenage mother who has a child without legs, but now we are taking care of the baby, and the mother is learning a vocation,” she said.
She acknowledged the extreme difficulty in caring for special children but entreated the mothers to consider them as blessings in disguise because most of them possessed special talents.
She, however, lamented some difficulties the foundation faced, including the lack of adequate resources such as infrastructure, food, diapers, and toiletries and appealed to the benevolent society for support.
As a mother with a child paralysed by spinal bifida, Mrs Adom called for special attention for the condition to save the lives of children diagnosed with it.
For her part, Maame Efua, the Founder of the Maame Efua Kids Foundation, explained that the visit and donation were a gesture of love intended to put smiles on the faces of the special children.
She called on the government to invest in the education of special children to nurture their talents.
“Some of these children are very talented and it will be such a shame to neglect them and not nurture these talents,” she added.
GNA