Funmi Ogundare
Founder and Director of Patrick’s Speech and Language Centre; and Pure Souls Learning Foundation, Dotun Akande, Thursday called for policy changes that will provide social support, respite care, education and employment opportunities for people with autism and intellectual disabilities.
Akande made the call at the Patrick’s Speech and Language Centre’s 20th anniversary RISE Summit, in Lagos, themed, ‘From Cradle to Contribution’.
She stressed the need for government to move beyond policies and ensure their effective implementation to promote inclusion of people with neurodevelopmental and intellectual disabilities.
She said the centre was shifting its focus from early intervention for children to preparing young adults and adults with disabilities for meaningful participation in society.
According to her, the theme of the anniversary, reflects the centre’s vision of ensuring that children who have benefited from its interventions eventually become active contributors to their communities.
She stated: “Many of them are part of the community. Some of them are still not part of the community because, one, parents are hiding; two, they don’t have financial support; and three, the government is not helping.”
The founder noted that despite progress in early intervention, with many children now accessing mainstream education and more organisations emerging in the neurodiversity and intellectual disability space, significant challenges remained, particularly for adults.
“We have done well with early intervention. Many children are now in mainstream schools. Many organisations have sprung up since we started to do things in the field of neurodiversity and intellectual disability. So now we are moving to the next stage, which is our children are now assuming 20. We are now looking at adults,” she said.
She urged the government to develop policies that would provide respite centres across the country, enabling parents and caregivers to temporarily place their children in safe, supportive environments when they need to travel or attend to other responsibilities.
The director explained that such centres could be operated through partnerships between government and private organisations, with appropriate systems put in place to ensure that parents remained responsible for their children.
“Our quest now is to have a policy where they can partner with private organisations. We have ways of knowing the people and ways in which we make them come back to pick their children,” she stated.
Beyond respite care, she also called for government support through housing assistance, subsidies and educational support for families raising children with disabilities.
“Authorities should review existing disability-related legislation and focus on implementation. The existence of laws alone would not guarantee inclusion.
“We have a lot of special people’s laws. Are they being practised? We need to look at it. Are they being implemented? Implementation is one of the challenges we have in this country,” Akande stressed.
She further called for legislation requiring private organisations to employ people with intellectual disabilities, arguing that employment should be based on individuals’ abilities rather than assumptions about their limitations.
She said people with intellectual disabilities could perform a range of roles depending on their capabilities, including administrative support, mailing and other workplace responsibilities.
In her keynote titled, ‘Building Strong Foundations’, Rear Admiral Itunu Hotonu (rtd) called for greater understanding, acceptance and family support for autistic children, stressing that families must move beyond stigma and misconceptions to recognise the individual needs and abilities of children on the autism spectrum.
She shared her experience as the grandmother of an autistic child, explaining that her personal journey, which began with her grandson’s diagnosis, eventually led to doctoral research on the experiences of families with level one autistic children in mainstream private schools in Lagos.
She said the initial diagnosis plunged her family into a wilderness marked by disbelief, confusion, fear and concerns about stigma, noting that her greatest challenge was not autism itself but the gap between what the family thought it knew about the condition and the reality they encountered.
According to her, the experience compelled her to question long-held assumptions about autism and disability and to embark on a process of unlearning misconceptions that had shaped her understanding of autistic people.
“I wanted to understand that wilderness. I wanted to look past the medical charts, the medical language, and explore the actual human experience of families like mine with level one autistic children,” she said.
Other speakers at the conference stressed the need for parents with children on the neuro divergent spectrum to reach out for help and speak about their journey.
“Stigma is keeping families away. We might call the children neuro divergent, but they are differently able. Don’t keep quiet. Tell your story and own your truth,” she said.