Discrimination begins at home

Fifteen years ago, when my son Ben was born with an intellectual disability, my wife and I realised that the opportunities for his education and advancement were going to be very different from those of his brothers. The prospects for his eventual independence from the family were so removed from reality. Yet we hoped. We did everything we could. We worked with him and with people who believed in his potential and his contribution to us all.

We found there were many like us, parents of children with an intellectual disability, who would not accept that their children should be shut away to vegetate in a "special school", and that we would not accept that our children would necessarily have to spend their lives in adult training centres, receiving no training for no future.

We heard of success stories; of adults with intellectual disabilities learning to read and write, holding a job, paying taxes, voting, running for office, getting married, living on their own, even starring in TV shows and films. We realised that the bar could be raised and that these boys and girls become teenagers and can fit in our streamed school system.

We adopted the word inclusion, incorporated it in our curriculum, defended it against teachers, hoped it would work. We watched our son grow up. We are seeing the generation of those who hoped begin to knock on the door of work.

We are seeing that door close. We are being told that, no, our son cannot be trained to work. No, he cannot learn with students who are not intellectually disabled. No, he would learn much more by going to a "special school" (or a "special college"?), spending his days with other intellectually-disabled persons, learning nothing, producing nothing, contributing nothing. This, we are told, is being done under the guise of reform, under the veneer of optimisation, after massive learned public consultation, to save money.

Somehow, we feel short-changed. Somehow, we feel that either we have been taken for a 15-year ride or that the vision of hope has been taken over by the merchants of despair. Lino Spiteri wrote two years ago about the "desert" of what happens after age 16 for the intellectually disabled. We feel that the "desert" is essentially the creation of our authorities. The desert can bloom, if only you water it. Ask the Israelis. We believe it does not have to be this way.

We know better. We refuse to accept that 15 years of training have been in vain. We believe that our authorities have lost the vision, essentially because they never truly believed in it.

We know that there will always be those who need far more assistance and support to get on in life. This is the eternal problem when one lumps the disabled together. On one hand we have the (physically) disabled moving for greater access to tertiary education at the University. And, yet, we have MCAST closing its only part-time course for (intellectually) disabled persons. This is discrimination.

In the year of anti-discrimination, we must clearly see who is discriminating, and stop it. We must reverse the process of exclusion, which is not limited to the sphere of disability but straddles all society, and invest in inclusion.

We must mean what we say when Malta accedes, together with our fellow EU member states, to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which lays down (27 1(d)): "State parties shall... enable persons with disabilities to have effective access to general technical and vocational guidance programmes, placement services and vocational and continuing training".

We must use all the talents of the country. Not doing so is a false economy. People are, thank God, our best resource. All our people matter. Even Ben.