“There is no doubt in our minds that the opening of this facility is a significant one, an event that will change the educational landscape of our country as it serves the many families who will receive treatment here.” – Minister of Education/Deputy Prime Minister of St. Kitts and Nevis Hon. Shawn Richards.
Parents in the Caribbean Islands of St. Kitts and Nevis will now find assistance for their young children who they suspect might show symptoms or have an autism spectrum disorder.
Dr. Sheryl Rosin, a certified and licensed PLAY Project Consultant, developed services in these under-served, low-resourced communities. Families now have somewhere to go and someone to turn to with the Sept. 4, 2018 opening of the St. Kitts Spectrum Services Centre located at the Industrial Site Pre-School in St. Kitts. The Spectrum Services Centre is the first of its kind to open in the Eastern Caribbean. The Centre delivers screenings, early diagnostic services and ongoing care using The PLAY Project model to children diagnosed with autism. The Centre’s opening is the culmination of four years of autism therapy development led by St. Kitts-based autism advocate, Ms. Mauricer Marshall, whose child participated in a 6-week intensive PLAY Project research study with Dr. Rosin in Florida at Nova Southeastern University in 2013.
Dr. Rosin has been conducting workshops and free clinic screenings for families in St. Kitts and Nevis for children with autism for many years. This project began a year after Dr. Rosin visited the island on vacation to see and meet the president of the University of Medicine and Health Sciences at St. Kitts (a Caribbean medical school). She had no idea what her presence would produce as she was introduced to a family with a young child, Mathieu, with red flags of autism during her visit. After meeting with this family and discussing possible treatment options on the island, Dr. Rosin quickly learned that services for children with special needs were limited to non-existent and that most people didn’t know what autism is. Thus, she invited the family to the US to participate in The PLAY Project. Since they could only come for six weeks, she created an intensive program and saw the child for several hours every day. Mathieu started off non-verbal and left speaking in three-four-word utterances. The PLAY Project changed his and his family’s lives. Once the family left, Dr. Rosin knew there was a need for having this service in the Federation and creating a Centre there would surely serve the nation’s youth effectively.
In an article published September 2018 in the St. Kitts Nevis Observer, Mr. William Hodge, permanent secretary to Minister of Education said: “The Ministry of Education is excited about this project reaching this point. We are eternally grateful and indebted to Dr. Sheryl Rosin for her relentless pursuit in ensuring that this project happens… our families don’t have to leave St. Kitts and go abroad to receive the treatment for autism, they are going to receive treatment right here.”
The Minister of State within the Ministry of Health, Hon. Wendy Phipps stated: “The message we (Ministry of Health) would like to send to the general public is that illnesses, disorders and diseases can happen to anybody. We owe it to our citizens, colleagues and residents to put things in place that recognize differences and appreciate the diversity in differences.”
This is just the beginning for PLAY’s impact in the Caribbean as Dr. Rosin continues to serve as the consulting director of the Centre in St. Kitts and has begun to spread more autism services in another Caribbean Island, Antigua. There is one person there who is also in her PLAY Project certification process. Dr. Rosin has also expanded into Central America where she provided the Two-Day Intensive PLAY Project Workshop in Guatemala.
The PLAY Project is the perfect model for these low-resourced communities as it teaches professionals and empowers parents to be their child’s best play partners, thus aiding growth for their future.
