A generation of cuts to education taking its toll on students
It was a joyful time waiting for Sara to be born. The pregnancy had been completely normal leading up to her birth at North Vancouver’s Lions Gate Hospital.
And then something went terribly wrong.
What followed were 18 years during which Sara’s mom, Heather Skuse, has struggled against a system increasingly besieged by relentless budget and service cuts. With Sara leaving high school this year, Skuse looks ahead with concern and apprehension about what will happen to Sara in the next chapter of her life, without many of the skills her mom had hoped the school system would teach her by this time.
Today, as a result of oxygen deprivation at birth, Sara suffers epileptic seizures and partial paralysis on her right side, making walking very difficult. She also suffers from cerebral palsy, vision problems that render her legally blind, microcephaly and developmental delays.
Skuse says at first there was an abundance of services to help her daughter. From kindergarten through Grade 7, Sara received speech therapy once or twice a week. An occupational therapist (OT) would regularly visit and check on simple but profoundly important skills, such as how she held her pencil or how a book should be set up to allow Sara to read or where she should sit in the class to get the greatest benefit from her teacher.
It was after Sara entered high school that the Liberal cuts really became evident. Help with simple life skills such as crossing a street, catching a bus or socially interacting with peers, became more infrequent.
“What was lost was the consistency of services,” said Skuse, adding the intervals between visits became longer as specialists, stretched to cover more and more students district wide, experienced burnout or left the system. Sara, who walks with a crutch and occasionally uses a wheelchair, would have benefited from help to improve her mobility, which would have helped her to live more independently.
“Learning is much more complex for students with special needs and even something like writing her name takes more intense teaching and time to develop. The loss of resources in the school system means this support is less and less available for children like Sara and more and more teaching is falling to parents,” said Skuse.
The “erosion of services” has been a slow process rather than a dramatic one, said Skuse. Funding for a particular initiative or program would simply dry up, and with that, the human resources needed to execute it.
Raising Sara is labour intensive and Sara’s brothers Timothy, 16, and Christopher, 14, also willingly pitch in without complaint to protectively watch over their big sister, read with her, or play games when mom or dad isn’t available.
“It’s kind of an insidious thing, an undercurrent that you don’t realize was happening until you get to the end of her high school career and say, ‘ Wait a sec, these were the things that were going to be done by now ’ — to be able to take the bus on her own, to be able to read and have some functional math skills, to be able to cross the street on her own.
“A doctor once told me that Sara has her entire life to learn how to read . . . but that’s only if someone is there to teach her and only if the resources are there.”
The loss of resources in the school system means this support is less and less available for children like Sara and more and more teaching is falling to parents.” HEATHER SKUSE