For those traveling along Springbank Drive, seeing a young man dressed as Sparky the fire dog across from London’s Civic Garden Complex isn’t an unusual sight.
For those traveling along Springbank Drive, seeing a young man dressed as Sparky the fire dog across from London’s Civic Garden Complex isn’t an unusual sight.
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“He waves at people and people stop to get a picture of him,” Richard Phillip said, of his 22-year-old son Liam Phillips, who likes to dress in costumes to brighten people’s days.
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But there is more to Liam’s story.
“It’s a story about how an autistic boy in London may have affected the lives of millions of children globally,” his dad said.
Richard Phillips and his wife, Kim Phillips, founded the Liam Project in 2011 and are rolling out a program in Jamaica that educates teachers and parents about autism.
Richard Phillips grew up in Jamaica and wrote a book, The Richest Man in Jamaica, about a relative, Raglan Phillips, who moved there as a 16-year-old boy in the 1800s, and worked to bring the Salvation Army to the country.
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Richard Phillips was in Jamaica promoting his book in 2011 when he had a chance meeting with the country’s education minister. Their conversation turned to autism because of Liam’s diagnosis.
As a result of that meeting, Richard Phillips volunteered to develop a manual on autism to be distributed to the thousands of teachers on the island.
“The manual is meant to be useful to parents as well as teachers,” Richard Phillips said. “It gives them a basic understanding of identifying the child and then what do you do with the child in the classroom and how to communicate with that child.”
Jamaican teachers and parents previously have had very little experience with autism, and due to that lack of knowledge, one estimate is 90 per cent of autistic children had been abused.
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“It’s a second-world country,” Richard Phillips said. “It’s the culture; they think the child is disobedient and it’s a behavioral thing. They have no idea.
“The only thing they know to do is what the last generation did for their children and that is to beat them.”
Five years ago, Richard Phillips returned to Jamaica to meet with the former education minister Andrew Holness, by then Jamaica’s prime minister, who asked him to put a program together to educate teachers about autism.
During his last visit to Jamaica he brought along Jonathan Alderson, a Harvard graduate, autism expert and inventory of an artificial intelligence tool that “can analyze every child to see where the child is on the spectrum.”
Richard Phillips said that technology will be part of a two-day program at Jamaica’s Mico University College for teachers, which starts in September. The course is designed to help teachers identify children on the autism spectrum and apply strategies that will help them learn.
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“When they take the course, they will have the basic knowledge about the terminologies that are used with autistic children, they will be able to see the behaviors,” Phillips said.
Participants also will observe teachers in the classroom teaching autistic children, he said. That kind of help “would be virtually impossible to establish in a third- or second-world country,” Richard Phillips said.
“Many Jamaican parents can’t afford a doctor to analyze their child properly,” he said.
Richard Phillips has big plans for the Liam Project and hopes one day to bring it to 24 third- or second-world countries.
As for Liam Phillips, who has several different costumes, including one for Dr. Very Good which he donates while at Victoria Hospital to cheer up patients, he has big plans as well.
“I would like to work with the London Fire Department, with my Sparky outfit and bring attention to autistic kids getting jobs,” he said.
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