Faber Says Society Must Do Better for Special Needs Children

At the end of Friday’s house meeting, Collet Area Representative and former Minister of Education, Patrick Faber, spoke about Gabriel Orellano’s tragic death. He emphasized that wearing blue for autism awareness means nothing if we don’t take collective responsibility for the child’s death and make the necessary changes as a society.

 

Patrick Faber, Area Representative, Collet

“This society fails, and I am sorry my friend from Belize Rural Central is not here, because she will agree with me, this society fails outrightly when we talk about how we treat, not only our children with special needs, but also our adults, even those physically challenged. We fail and we give a lot of lip service. Look at the amount of people on social media who proudly wore blue yesterday. Thank God valentine is coming up so they can wear red. Look at the amount though madam speaker and while that is encouraging, if you just wear blue yesterday to support the cause, even if you just gave a little bit of money, that is not enough. That is not enough if you don’t have some serious desire to change something that you are doing in order to make a difference, in order to make the environment in which our children live. I have a six-year-old child and wouldn’t want to see my baby running out there on the street, not an autistic child but that would complicate the matter even more. And as a parent it would kill me to know that my child left the school compound. Many of you watched the news and saw that your parents could have felt his pain. He should have had to go through that. So, Madam Speaker, I make the appeal, this is not about blaming anybody. In fact, if we want to blame, we take on the blame collectively.”