Children with Disabilities in Todos Santos, Mexico

Since March, our Children with Special Needs program has been operating in a highly modified manner due to the coronavirus pandemic. We closed our office for all usual services in order to protect the children and their families. We have continued to provide medications and medical aids for the special needs children by appointment or home delivery only. Additionally we have provided telemedicine support and therapies via phone for parents who can receive and administer home therapies.   Any therapy that requires in person delivery has been halted until such time we can safely reopen our offices for patient attendance.

Children with disabilities are an especially vulnerable group due to underlying health issues and often the inability to understand the importance of social distancing. In order to keep these children as safe as possible we are advising their parents to keep them at home. We will continue to provide telephone support and outreach calls to our patient families during which we screen for psychological issues resulting from the drastic change in social interactions. We are continually evaluating the opportunity to serve these children by creative methods and are currently considering the development of videos for use at home for those families who have the technology to use such.   Although we want to resume full services for these children as soon as possible, we anticipate the many issues and risks caused by the pandemic to prolong the period of time until we can return to normal services.

In February we launched a new vocational program as part of or work on behalf of children with disabilities.  The intent of this program is to help older children develop skills to improve their self sufficiency and to enable them to generate income to support themselves and their families as they grow older. The new program includes the development of skills for making items which can be sold in a retail outlet and engaging children in businesses where work skills can be developed. We launched the program on February 14 with a luncheon and fashion show during which four of the children modeled with adult volunteers in the program. The event attendees helped to furnish the new vocational facility, and the warm reception given to the models helped to boost their self confidence and social integration.

Note: As of March 16, our office is temporarily closed due to coronavirus. We are continuing to support urgent patient needs and will restart the vocational program soon as possible.