sweethearts who had attended school together, and married now for ten years, they were the proud parents of a bright and happy three-year old daughter, Megan.

Then, last January, their lives changed forever. Megan was rushed to hospital where she was diagnosed as having bacterial meningitis. She recovered, but when she left hospital three weeks later, Megan was totally deaf.

Painfully attempting to come to terms with the reality of their situation as the parents of a now handicapped child, Mr. and Mrs. Burgess are increasingly concerned about her future.

With Mr. Burgess employed at a local bank, and Mrs. Burgess working as secretary to the president of an international insurance company, they had planned to send her to one of the Island's private schools.

But according to the provisions of the Education Act as it now stands, therapeutic services are only supplied to schools within the Government system. This means that when she is four, Megan, who presently attends a private nursery school, will have to transfer, first to a Government pre-school and then on to Government primary school where, they have been assured, during a meeting with the Education Department, specialist teaching is "being lined up for her''.

Megan requires intensive training in sign language and in speech therapy. It is widely recognised that the earlier deaf and speech-impaired children receive help, the better their chances for normal lives as adults.

"The Education Department is working very hard to do their best, but they are very limited in manpower. We have been trying to get speech therapy for her, but the Department is swamped because there are so many children with speech impediments in Bermuda,''says Mrs. Burgess.

"Until last July, we were paying for two private, part-time speech therapists but we were told that Child Development Services would take over, so we stopped the sessions.'' So far, no speech therapist has been provided. The therapy she has received has been taught by her sign language teacher, Ms Denise Booth. She has been given this programme by a speech therapist from Child Development Services who periodically assesses Megan's progress before giving Ms Booth the next stage to teach. This is not what the Burgesses had been led to expect. They are particularly frustrated because they feel that Megan, who had started singing nursery rhymes and chatting quite fluently before her illness, would probably make rapid progress in her speech if she had a full-time therapist.

Stressing that they are pleased Megan's progress in sign language with Ms Booth, Mr. and Mrs. Burgess are, nevertheless, paying a private teacher for two hours additional sign training, because " Denise is swamped with work''.

They feel that the limited hours of training presently being offered to their daughter are inadequate at this crucial stage of her life. And they add, they have had to fight "very heard'' for what they do get.

"When Megan came out of hospital,'' says her father,"someone from Child Development assessed her, but never got back to us, or gave us the results.

Everything we've managed to get for Megan, we've had to do ourselves, and my wife has had to push and get on everyone's nerves before they would even listen to our problems. We are not just talking about Megan here,'' he adds, "there will be other deaf children in Bermuda and we would like to be able to help them, because no-one was there for us when this happened. We had to go and beg for help.'' Mr. Burgess believes that Bermuda is small enough for any child with special educational needs, to be known individually to the people who are supposed to be providing adequate services.

"But no one, apart from Denise, has ever even met Megan. How can you sort out a child's best interests and needs if you've never met them? No one has ever been to see her at Woodmont. Darlene Warner (Education Officer, Special Education Student Services) said she was coming, but has never been,''he says.

Now they are querying whether, in the wake of the closure of Friendship Vale School, the concept of `mainstreaming' (where children attend regular schools) has any hope of success, unless more specialised teachers are hired.

Says Mrs. Burgess, "Since all this happened, we have come into contact with a lot of deaf people, mostly in their early thirties. They all say that their real education only began when they went overseas at the age of 16, or so.

Bermuda, from our experience, seems to be inadequate for children with special needs''.

The Burgesses feel fortunate that Woodmont accepted Megan, in spite of her problems: "She is so happy here,'' says her mother, "I had her name down when I was pregnant, and they have bent over backwards to help her''.

So much so, that the children in her class have been working with Ms Booth to learn sign language, so that the whole group can communicate with Megan. At the Christmas concert, the children performed a song in sign to show their parents what they had learned.

Woodmont director Mrs. Lynn Williams says, "Megan is a very energetic, very bright little girl who is very popular here. It's good for her to be with normal children. Two of our teachers have sign training, which is very helpful. Denise Booth is wonderful -- she does stories with the whole group.

It's a good experience for the other children to have Megan at the school. We hear that they go home and talk to their parents in sign!'' Mr. and Mrs. Burgess sound just a little wistful when they relate the reaction of the school's owner, Mrs. Dorothy Billings, when asked if their daughter would still be accepted at Woodmont.

"She told us, `Megan is going to face enough problems in her life -- I don't intend to be one of them!''' In the opinion of the Burgesses, the slow initiative taken by government, may fill that bill. Says Walter Burgess, "Juliana and I are products of the government school system. But my faith in the system as it is now, dwindles every time one of those politicians gets up and rambles on about education. In the run-up to the election we informed all the candidates that we wanted to talk specifically about education and the problems we were experiencing. Not one of them came to talk to us''.

Education Officer, Mrs. Warner, in the meanwhile, expresses surprise that Mr.

and Mrs. Burgess have voiced concerns about the assistance Megan is receiving through the Department and the further help that she will only be eligible to receive when she is four years old and transferred to a government facility.

"They have never said anything to us about any of this. This is the first we've ever heard that they are unhappy,'' she says, noting that Megan presently receives four and a half hours per week in specialist help.

"Her needs will be assessed as she progresses. We have conferences about her needs and she will be monitored weekly. I don't know what her hours of service will be, but she will have an interpreter with her all the time, and a teacher for the impaired, who is on our Student Services team,'' says Mrs. Warner.

Meanwhile, the Burgesses point out, 10 months after Megan was diagnosed as being hearing and speech impaired, she still does not have a speech therapist.

This, according to Mrs. Burgess, despite three meetings with Mrs. Warner in which they stressed the urgency of their daughter's situation. In their opinion, four and a half hours sign language per week is woefully inadequate and lags "very far'' behind what is normally offered elsewhere.

MEGAN'S WORLD -- Three-year old Megan Burgess (centre) pictured with her friends Rebecca Hall (left) and Jordan Amaral (right) at Woodmont Nursery School.