A database of news and information about people with disabilities and disability issues...
Copyright statement: Unless otherwise stated, all posts on this blog continue to be the property of the original author/publication/Web site, which can be found via the link at the beginning of each post.
In Canada, trained service dogs are only available for visually impaired or autistic children.
Hart, the black lab, came from Kansas; making nine year old Sam (pictured) the first "known" Canadian with down syndrome to ever use an animal assistant.
“He's far more aware, far less quiet, more interactive with his siblings and people that he meets,” says Sam’s mom, Joanne Wilkinson.
But Sam won't be allowed to bring Hart to his grade four class in Brandon, until school staff are trained and issues around allergies are ironed out. So Sam is being home schooled.
“It's not so much the issue of the needs around the child as it is to determine whether or not the animal that we are going to have in the school meet the standards,” explained Dr. Donna Michaels of the Brandon School Division.
Because Hart isn't a Canadian trained dog, his skills will be assessed by Manitoba Search and Rescue officials, who have also volunteered to train school staff next week.
The process has been further complicated with no provincial legislation or regulation in place for guide dogs in schools.
Joanne has filed a complaint with the Human Rights Commission.
Within a few months his family will be moving south to Ohio.
They just hope their struggles will help guide the way for other children with disabilities.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From Global Winnipeg in Canada:
