A single mother has blown the whistle on the atrocious conditions and discrimination the Islands disabled children are subjected to.

Police officer Marie Picard contacted The Royal Gazette late last week and outlined some of the problems parents of disabled children encountered on a daily basis.

And one of her most disturbing statements was about her son's aid worker at his summer camp, "My son is prejudiced against every day by a woman who won't allow him to touch her.'' And in particular, she highlighted the confusion surrounding transport for disabled children to and from summer camps.

Her son has been attending a summer programme and a Ministry of Education bus used to transport the children during the school year was being run by the Ministry of Youth, Sport, Parks and Recreation for transport to the summer camps.

Mrs. Picard said that last week her son arrived home with a big "egg'' on his head, and discovered it was caused when he fell off the seat and hit the floor of the bus which has no seat belts.

Mrs. Picard spoke to Milton Scott about the matter but she said he passed it off as a problem for Youth and Sport.

On Friday, she got a call from her baby sitter to say that the bus would not be collecting her child for summer camp next week for the final three days the camp is running.

She received no explanation why, and says she deals with this all the time.

She says, "people in the Government and the education system just don't care.'' However Dennis Lister, Minister for Youth, Sport, Parks and Recreation spoke to The Royal Gazette on Friday and said: "I as Minister am giving a guarantee that we will provide transport for special needs children next week.'' Mrs. Picard's son has cerebral palsy, a brain condition that affects motor function.

Mrs. Picard said: "a physiotherapy programme exists at Government schools but does not function, and the problem has been going on for years, parents have been complaining for years.'' Mrs. Picard said: "Starting from September, the physiotherapy needs for the Board of Education is going to be coming from the department of health, and we have no idea of what this will encompass.'' Her son attended Prospect Pre-School two years ago and completed his first year at Elliot Primary this year.

She said the therapy he received was good but the service was poor.

And she added: "We have no idea when therapists are hired. It is very here and there.

"Last (academic) year there were only three therapists for the whole Island and of these one got sick and one left the Island to go back to the US because of the stress.

"That means one person is left for the whole island, one end to the other.'' She said her son needed at least four sessions of physiotherapy a week but in reality they only had one, perhaps two 45 minute sessions a week.

And she claims Mr. Scott at the Ministry of Education has done nothing but try and pacify her and all of the other mothers who experience the same nightmare on a daily basis.

Mrs. Picard said several years ago she didn't expect to put her child in the school system and had no intentions of placing him in the public school system.

She investigated the possibility of placing him in a private school such as Mount St. Agnes or Saltus, but they did not have the facilities to care for him, and they said she would have to provide her own aid worker to look after her son.

Mrs. Picard said she received a call from the board of education during her school dilemma and was told her son should be in the Government school system.

She asked why, and said: "they gave me a big promotion and told me all the things they could do for my son, we can do this and that and so on, but it was all lies.

"This is the kind of thing that goes on with our kids here, and it has got to stop now.'' HANDICAP HAN