July, 2022.- Listening to how children progress in the addiction of different sounds, and the flutter of adolescents and young people waiting to receive specialized care as usual during the morning hours on Fridays, at the Diagnosis and Orientation Center (CDO) of Nuevitas, located in a in Tania la Guerrillera special school.
Palermo Domínguez Espinosa, team leader and founder of the CDO in this municipality to the northeast of Camagüey, specifies that it was established in 1994 and consists of six specialists who perform coherently in the care and orientation of these age groups and their families. So that they achieve learning and their behavior with good development in the different contexts in which they develop, that is, the school, the family, and the community.
In this work of infinite love converge, pedagogue, psychometrist, speech therapist, social worker, and psychologist, and the latter remains at the head of the team.
On the way to CDO
"The Attention to the population with special educational needs and other people who need guidance, based on concerns with the development of their child or the methods they use in their teaching and their education, in general, are attended by the CDO especially, on Fridays. Although, we also receive the cases that come up on any other day of the week.
We offer our services to those who come here because of a family concern or because the educational center to which they belong requests the attention of these children by these specialists”, points out Domínguez Espinosa.
Those who pay attention to this population with special needs are psychopedagogues who work in the different school institutions, the educators of daycare centers, directors and those who work in the special room, as well as the promoters at the popular council level who participate with the children of the Educate your Child program.
TYPES OF SPECIAL NEEDS AND CARE
On the other hand, the also founder Suleimi López Pérez center, a graduate of Defectology in the specialization of Speech Therapy, is who attends to children with a communication disorder, a problem that is handled from language.
The educational needs can be of an intellectual type, physical-motor limitation, communication and socialization, and behavior. Once the problem is identified, the file is opened and the child is attended by the specialists.
In the councils, the psychopedagogues provide direct treatment, and in the event that kid has a language deficit, the speech therapist of the popular council is the one who treats him, while in the most significant cases belonging to the Educate your Child program, which do not have specialists in the council, on Fridays here we give them stimulation aimed at supplying the deficit that they may have”, pointed out the Master in Special Education.
In the most significant cases, the child is placed in different care modalities that are expressed in the Educate your Child program, preschool classrooms, or special schools.
"We have eight children located in the special room of the daycare center, they have educational needs of an intellectual type and educational needs of an educational type, this is a transit one in which some solve their difficulty and go to the normal room of the daycare center and in the case that they do not overcome the difficulty, they are placed in the preparatory grade in the special school after an investigation when the child turns six years old.
If the infant with sensory deficit, deafness, visual weakness, behavioral disorder or intellectual disability cannot stay here in the special school, he or she goes to the outpatient modality and is offered at home by a team specialist, to promote a better quality of life and the integral development of the personality of each child and adolescent”, added López Pérez.
On the other hand, Caterin Labrada, a psychometrist at the local Diagnostic 
and Orientation Center, added that one of its fundamental functions is the evaluation of the student's personality through different techniques that include graphic expression, drawings and complementary approaches such as the ten wishes, which allow us to know how the boy or girl is doing in their family, school and community context, and in this way we obtain tools to find solutions to improve their cognitive and affective performance.
The finish line
Staying at the Nuevitas Diagnosis and Orientation Center and witnessing that these men and women start their work day every day willing to give everything to contribute to the well-being of others, and in this way perceive the smile that is drawn on the face of infants and families in the face of progress in the development and behavior of children is very gratifying.
Undoubtedly, dedication and consecration are the words that define this great team that makes up this consolidated department with almost three decades at the service of the locals.
