- With 87% motor disability, a young man from Usurbil has had an assistant in all his school hours in his academic career, but when he has gone to Vocational Training, he has only been given a part-time assistant. No progress can be made in the hours when there is no companion, and the centre itself has requested a full-time assistant, but has been refused by the Department of Education. This situation leads students to psychological therapy. “The only alternative they have left is to suspend their studies, abandon the possibility of training, development and employment and a promising future,” says ARGIA the student’s mother.
Maria Enriquez's daughter, who doesn't want to enroll, is 16 years old. Cerebral palsy affects all four extremities with significant mobility problems. You need an electric wheelchair, you have vision problems and you can move your right hand, but you have difficulties. Thus, “he needs to adapt the didactic material and needs help to use the paper or the computer, as he cannot do it at the speed of his colleagues, and even writes more slowly,” explains Enrique.
In order to carry out this course, the Administrative Management of Vocational Training cycle of Usurbil, but instead of assigning the full-time assistant as before, he has been assigned to half of the school hours and the rest of the hours must be he himself. The argument of the Department of Education of the Basque Government was that half a day could be sufficient and beneficial for the development of autonomy. “We take it with skepticism, and we believe that more than the argument is an excuse to cut economically, but we decided to give the opportunity, to see if it actually was. Then we saw that no: from the beginning she saw that her daughter could not keep up with her peers, she started to stay behind, more and more lost, frustrated... She has greatly affected her self-esteem, thought it is a burden and wanted to leave the studies, affected the relationships until isolation,” says the mother.
"From the beginning she saw that her daughter could not keep up with her peers, she started to stay behind, more and more lost, frustrated... She has affected her very much in self-esteem, thought it is a burden and wanted to leave school, affected relationships until isolation"
Requests for resolutions have been rejected by the Administration. “It has been a very hard year that has affected health and personal life. She continues to study and also in psychological therapy. There is a lot of talk about the mental health of adolescents, do you know the consequences of what they are doing, how many people suffer with this, starting with my daughter?”
Henry has made it clear: on the part of the center and the teachers have had total involvement and accompanied them all the time. They did everything: he rejected two subjects (leaving them for the next course) in order to be more flexible, but the difficulties were the same; a second assessment was requested from the Berritzegune and the psychopedagogical advisers confirmed the difficulties, advised the teachers. Finally, at the beginning of the second trimester, the center itself asked the Education Department to require a full-time assistant because it was evident that there was no autonomy in half a day. The Administration rejected the request. “The argument has been that the aid granted is appropriate to the resources provided for that course. That is, what you will have is what you were initially assigned and that there is no possibility of change”.
Complaint after refusal
Neither the school nor the family gave up. In the beginning of the third trimester, the Department of Education was called upon because “it is not feasible to continue this way and the resource placed is not clearly sufficient”. The center has added a lot of data and information, “how many measures have been taken and yet the difficulties persist,” Enrique explains. The Asociación Guipuzcoana de Asociados, which works in the defense of the rights of people with disabilities, has included a report, requesting a full-time assistant and arguing legally. About to finish the course, they have not received a reply, “and right now I do not expect an answer because they have already given you help for the next course: 50% again. The daughter is still waiting, hoping that they will give her full time support, because she knows that without her she cannot.”
"Right now I don't expect you to respond to the complaint, because you've already been given help for the next course: 50% again. The daughter is still waiting because she knows that without that help she can't."
“The administration thinks you’re going to give in.”
In the words of María Enriquez, “the only alternative left is the abandonment of studies, the abandonment of training, development and employment and the promising future. Once compulsory education is over, is it already? The right to inclusive education is a trajectory full of obstacles and obstacles, full of complaints and waits, with anguish that you don’t know what the next course is going to happen… Because of a disability, the daughter has some limits, but what she has left out is the Department of Education,” she said. “The Administration thinks you’re not going to fight and you’re going to give in, because many families do, because they don’t have strength or possibility… It’s very difficult to deal with all this.”
What does the law say?
Usurbil's mother says they came to believe that perhaps her daughter was not entitled to vocational training, because it is not compulsory education. “But no, he has a right.” In the hands of the law, the agreement on people with disabilities establishes the need to ensure an inclusive system at all educational levels, including Vocational Training, and in the laws of the Spanish State and the CAPV the messages are in the same line: According to Enriquez, the law emphasizes that “students with motor disabilities have the right to the resources necessary to carry out their studies on equal opportunities”.
María Enrique leaves the question in the air: “Does the Department really believe in inclusion?”