RAS AL KHAIMAH // Doctors Sharon and Lee Waller know only too well the struggles parents of special needs children face every day.
The American academics, based at the American University in RAK (Aurak), have a 27-year-old son who is both blind and autistic and they are using their personal and professional expertise to set up the emirate’s first special needs diagnostic centre for adults and children.
“There’s a community need, and not just schools or higher education,” said maths teacher Mr Waller.
“We want to be able to offer affordable services for the community in a way that can be sustained by the university personnel rather than by an external agency.”
Mrs Waller is a diagnostician for special needs, the only one in the emirate. Since arriving in the UAE 18 months ago, she and her husband have worked to make diagnosis more accessible.
“Right now, people have to travel to Abu Dhabi and Dubai,” she said.
The couple are applying for funding through local sources to buy tests which cost between Dh9,000 and Dh22,000.
Parents pay about Dh1,500 for a diagnosis which Mr Waller said is “much more expensive than in the US”.
“We want a system that’s pro-rated on the income of the parents,” he said.
Mrs Waller, the university’s manager of counselling, testing and disability services, has worked with teachers and said there was a “desperate” need to train them in working with special needs children.
“Teachers just don’t know what to do,” she said. “They try their best but they don’t understand what they need to be doing. They are very open to ask how but don’t have the skills that they need and I don’t know that they know where to go and acquire those skills.”
The couple were unable to bring their son with them to the UAE as there were no facilities to accommodate him.
“Our son is part of the reason to do this,” he said. “We know what parents are going through.”
mswan@thenational.ae
