COLUMBIA, S.C. — A local nonprofit is helping community members get answers to questions they might have regarding special needs or disabilities. The Latino Community Development hosted a workshop Monday to bring awareness to disabilities within the Latino community.
“My son is autistic. He has a rare autoimmune disorder and we just moved to the area. I'm needing to find a lot of resources,” Nicole Ortiz said.
Ortiz attended Mondays workshop, she says these events help spread awareness about disabilities within the Latino community.
“I've come across so many Latino households where I see a child behaving just like mine, and they have no clue what autism is or no clue of different diagnoses. They all need support, and it's the lack of awareness sometimes that doesn't allow them to be able to say, hey, I need to take my child in for an evaluation and then that child receives the supports they need to become a thriving member of society,” she said.
Posibilidades Sin Fin SC or Possibilities Without End SC. is an event put on by the Latino Community Development who says they saw a need for more educational events in the community.
“We noticed as a team, the big need for an event that had something where they brought resources to the community with children with disabilities. We were doing our grants, our grants manager was doing research on figuring out what was the need and that came up there was a lot of families that didn't know about the resources that existed here in South Carolina that could potentially help them with their needs for their children,” Zimri Bertotty, from the organization, said.
According to a 2020-2021 survey by the Data Resource Center for Child and Adolescent Health about 260,000 children in South Carolina, under age 18, require special health care needs.
"Our families do reach out for help. It's who do they need to reach out to or the ten other people that they need to reach out to. A lot of our families first start with their pediatrician ,which is perfect and then they might go to Medicaid, but they might not think about the Department of Disabilities and Special Needs. We know that there are more people who meet our eligibility criteria that are in South Carolina than are actively being served by our agency,”
Stephanie Turner is with South Carolina Department of Disabilities and Special Needs, she says the agency offers resources in both Spanish and English.
“It's important that everybody with a disability has the support and services that they need. The main purpose of DDSN is to support people in their community, to keep them as independent as possible for as long as possible and just because they speak another language doesn't mean that they can't access that services and support,”
At Monday’s event, attendees were able to learn ways to receive free equipment, childcare, insurance and doctor recommendations in both English and Spanish.
"When I've attended a lot of resource festivals in the past, everything was always in one language. You can imagine anyone who just doesn't speak English kind of feels left out and if there's no one there to translate, it can be just discouraging, they may not want to get out and find out or you know, it's going to affect the children,”
If you missed Monday's event, you can contact the Latino Community Development for information.