The Special Olympics provides Ireland with the perfect opportunity to reflect on the nation's attitudes to the disabled - or differently abled as I prefer to call them, not out of any desire to be politically correct but from a real belief that people who lack some capacities develop others in compensation, writes Heather Ingman.
I read somewhere that we are all born with disabilities and that as we grow up, if we're lucky, we develop the capacity to conceal or compensate for them. It's a statement with which I can easily identify.
In arguing for an overhaul of Irish attitudes to disabilities I must declare a vested interest. I am the mother of a special needs son. Since he deserves his privacy, let's call him Sam. He is not a child who needs constant physical care. I am filled with admiration for parents who care for severely physically handicapped children day in day out. It's more than I could cope with. Nevertheless Sam has severe communication difficulties. He needs speech therapy, occupational therapy and a high level of assistance to survive in mainstream school.
Since moving to Ireland I have been quietly appalled at how parents of special needs children, amid all their day-to-day care for their child, have also to fight their way through endless bureaucracy and endure being passed from department to department.
Comparisons with the UK are invidious and I have always wished that people in this country would spend less time looking back over their shoulders at the old enemy. But I have to say that as soon as I mentioned my worries about my son's delayed speech to a health visitor in England Sam, then aged two, was immediately slotted into a system where he received speech therapy, occupational therapy and a place in a specialist state nursery school. Of course not everything was rosy. He never received enough therapy. We had to fight constantly to ensure that his abilities were not underestimated simply because his speech was poor. Nonetheless, it was a start and a million times better than a situation where parents, exhausted from the strain of caring for their child and frantic with worry, have also to go out and find those services for themselves. In particular, the transition from primary school to secondary is nightmarish for parents here.
For me it has never been Sam who was the problem, rather the way our society is organised. Sam has been a joy to raise. He has kept our feet firmly on the ground and reminds us every day of the things in life that are worth having. He has compensated for his speech difficulties in so many different ways. He is, for example, much more observant of other people than ordinary children of his age. A friend of ours whose child suffers from juvenile arthritis remarked recently on how well Sam anticipated her son's needs. Sam and children like him have a great amount to offer if only we are willing to stop and learn from them.
The conjunction of the Special Olympics with the annual race for points in the Leaving Certificate should lead us to ponder where our society is going. For many years I have taught and examined some of the State's brightest young people. I think I have a fairly good idea of what third-level exams can and cannot assess (and I am also aware that many of this country's brightest young people are prevented by economic or social circumstances from ever reaching my door). A child like Sam takes us away from the middle-class focus on points and careers and brings us back to basics.
I am reminded of a lawyer in Ecuador whom we knew some years ago. He had been a law student in the United States during the late 1960s at a time when the hippie movement was flowering. He told us he used to look at these middle-class drop-outs who had been raised with all the things so many people in his country lacked - homes, education, a comfortable income - and wonder what they were protesting about. He was struggling to gain an education so that he could go back and use his skills for the benefit of his country and ensure that more of his compatriots had access to the things the hippies had turned their backs on.
In the end examinations and points are important only to the extent that they allow young people to employ their skills in a way that fulfils them and contributes to the well-being of others. What I wish for Sam, as for every special needs child, is that he may find an occupation that is satisfying for him and that he may find happiness with a partner and children of his own. He may not be able to speak very articulately to them but I know he will make a fine father.
It is surely not too much to ask of the state that it stretches its definition of nationhood to include Sam and children like him so that they have the attention, education and training for life to which they, as much as the highest points scorers in the Leaving, are entitled. Of course Ireland must encourage its bright young people, the country's future leaders; but a nation's level of civilisation is judged by the way it treats its most vulnerable members.
I wish good luck to all the Special Olympics athletes, their carers and the volunteers who have given up their holidays to participate in what will surely be a glorious event. I hope this will be a turning point in the nation's treatment of people with disabilities and their families. Let us not have to look back in a few years' time and reflect that the choice of Ireland as a venue for the Special Olympics was bitterly ironic.