Our Super Yulast Journey

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AN OPEN LETTER TO OUR GOVERNMENT AND POLICY MAKERS

From CEFASGPH – Cerebral Palsy Epilepsy Family Awareness Support Group Philippines

Nearly nine years. Thousands of families. One shared call for change.

At CEFASGPH, we are more than an organization. We are parents, caregivers, persons with disabilities, healthcare volunteers, partners, and advocates who have journeyed alongside Filipino families raising children with cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and other developmental and neurological conditions.

Through community-based rehabilitation, parent empowerment, education, and collaboration with volunteer medical professionals and supporters, we have witnessed both remarkable resilience and the difficult realities that families continue to face every day.

Our message is grounded not in theory, but in lived experience.

We recognize and appreciate the many programs and initiatives already provided by government agencies and institutions. These efforts have helped many families. Yet, despite these valuable services, access remains fragmented.

Parents still move from one office to another, repeating documents, medical histories, and applications just to obtain therapy, medicines, diagnostic tests, adaptive devices, transportation assistance, or financial support. The burden of navigating the system often becomes another challenge families must carry.

CEFASGPH respectfully calls for a Unified National Early Intervention and Disability Support System—one that is coordinated, accessible, family-centered, and responsive to the lifelong needs of children with disabilities.

Our Seven Essential Priorities

1. Comprehensive Early Intervention
Every child deserves immediate access to physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, feeding therapy, developmental intervention, and behavioral support based on individual needs.

2. Continuous Medical Monitoring
Regular developmental assessments, specialist consultations, diagnostic services, and laboratory examinations should be consistently available to guide timely intervention.

3. Accessible Medicines and Medical Care
Children with disabilities should receive affordable or fully subsidized medicines, maintenance treatment, hospitalization, and long-term medical support without overwhelming financial hardship.

4. Appropriate Adaptive Devices
Mobility aids, orthotics, communication devices, standing frames, seating systems, sensory equipment, feeding devices, and other assistive technologies should be provided according to each child’s functional needs.

5. Transportation Assistance
Distance and transportation costs should never prevent children from attending therapy sessions, medical appointments, or educational programs.

6. One Integrated System of Services
Medical care, rehabilitation, diagnostics, medicines, adaptive devices, guarantee letters, and financial assistance should be connected through one coordinated national system with transparent monitoring, efficient resource utilization, and equitable access for every family regardless of location.

7. Accessible and Inclusive Education
Every child—including those who are non-speaking, non-mobile, or with complex support needs—deserves access to quality, systematic, and inclusive education that allows them to learn, participate, and thrive.

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Our Collective Appeal

While financial assistance is important, accessibility and availability matter even more.

Support should never depend on a family’s income, address, or social status. Every Filipino child with a disability deserves equal opportunities to receive timely intervention and lifelong support.

We have seen firsthand that early intervention changes lives.

We have also seen how delays in therapy, medical care, and education can limit a child’s opportunities—not because of the disability itself, but because the necessary support arrived too late or was unavailable.

We are not asking for special treatment.

We are asking for a system that reflects the realities faced daily by Filipino families raising children with disabilities—a system that walks beside them consistently, not occasionally.

With the right support, many children can maximize their abilities, participate meaningfully in society, and achieve greater independence. For those who will always require assistance, long-term programs must likewise protect the dignity, well-being, and quality of life of both the individual and their caregivers.

Our Hope

A comprehensive, unified, and accessible disability support system is more than a government program.

It is an investment in children’s futures.

It is hope for families.

It is dignity for every person with disability.

Because the true measure of disability support is not the number of programs created—but the number of lives transformed.

Every child deserves the opportunity to grow.
Every family deserves a system that supports them.
Together, let us build a Philippines where disability support is accessible, coordinated, inclusive, and available to all.

— CEFASGPH (Cerebral Palsy Epilepsy Family Awareness Support Group Philippines)
Empowering Families • Advancing Inclusion • Transforming Communities

March is Cerebral Palsy Awareness Month💚

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