“The remaining 1,600 don’t have access to education, according to data at the provincial social affairs agency,” Sae Kani, the Arbeiter Samariter Bund Deutschland e.v. (ASB) disaster risk reduction and education program manager, said in Bantul, Yogyakarta, Tuesday.

Sae Kani blamed the condition on a variety of factors, including the lack of care from the relevant institutions and lack of parents’ knowledge about the needs of disabled children.

“Many of the parents of disabled children do not know what their kids really need. And even when they know, they often have no idea how to access the education their children need as most elementary schools also do not have materials for the disabled,” she said.

Another factor she listed was mistreatment, in which children of different disabilities were grouped together.

An example of this, she said, was the so-called tuna grahita (mentally disabled) group, which also included autistic children and slow learners.

“It’s difficult finding the best way to deal with disabled children and deciding what they actually need unless we know what their physical handicaps are,” Sae Kani said.

To help improve access to education for disabled children, she added, her organization would implement a special program, starting this year, funded by the European Commission.

The program, she said, was scheduled to operate for 20 months and is being implemented in cooperation with other related institutions including the education agency, social affairs agency and health agency.

To help make the program successful, she added, more special supervising teachers (GPK) were also needed.

In Bantul, for example, there are currently 70 GPK. “We will try to increase this to 100,” she said.
Sae Kani, however, could not tell how many of the 1,600 disabled children in the province without access to education the program would help.

She said that as a facilitator, her organization helped prepare a framework, make guidelines, give training and coordinate with related parties.

”It depends on the respective institutions as well as the accuracy of the data from the social affairs agency, the preparedness of the education agency, etc.,” she said.

The program, she added, was a continuation of a disaster-preparedness program for students from general elementary schools, Islamic elementary schools and schools for the disabled.

More than 2,000 schools across Yogyakarta, Klaten regency (Central Java) and Ciamis regency (West Java) were involved in the program, she said.

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