The monitoring service for secondary students at the Touret school in Sherbrooke, in Estrie, is threatened since the organization which currently offers the service will withdraw in December due to a lack of manpower. .
Le Touret school welcomes young people aged 4 to 21 living with an average, severe or profound intellectual disability. Primary age students have access to school daycare, but not those aged 12 and over.
Around twenty young people aged 12 to 21 benefit from a monitoring service offered for three years by the organization La libellule de Keila et Véro.
“I am a single mother of a 15-year-old child with Down syndrome. I am a nurse at the Hôtel-Dieu, my daughter cannot be left alone, this service is essential for me and for many other parents,” said Josianne Lehoux.
Except that due to a lack of staff, La libellule will cease surveillance service at the end of December. “It brings me a lot of anxiety,” confides M.me Lehoux. For me, if the surveillance service disappears, I will have to remove my child from school and entrust her to my parents.
The school management therefore turns to the Ministry of Family. She is asking for funding of $20,000 to pay internal workers who could monitor the adolescents.
The funding request will be analyzed by the Ministry of Family.
“This type of program, usually, we apply in the spring with a view to returning to school in the fall, so there is a small delay issue, but we are still confident [à l’idée] to obtain the funding since we are talking about an amount that is not very high, we are talking about around $20,000,” indicated the director of communications of the Sherbrooke Region School Service Center, Donald Landry.
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