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The complexity of rural contexts experienced by community disability workers in three southern African countries

BOOYENS, Margaret
VAN PLETZEN, Ermien
LORENZO, Theresa
2015

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An understanding of rural communities is fundamental to effective community-based rehabilitation work with persons with disabilities. By removing barriers to community participation, persons with disabilities are enabled to satisfy their fundamental human needs. However, insufficient attention has been paid to the challenges that rural community disability workers (CDWs) face in trying to realise these objectives. This qualitative interpretive study, involving in-depth interviews with 16 community disability workers in Botswana, Malawi and South Africa, revealed the complex ways in which poverty, inappropriately used power and negative attitudes of service providers and communities combine to create formidable barriers to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in families and rural communities. The paper highlights the importance of understanding and working with the concept of ‘disability’ from a social justice and development perspective. It stresses that by targeting attitudes, actions and relationships, community disability workers can bring about social change in the lives of persons with disabilities and the communities in which they live.

Applied research on disability in Africa : general mapping

INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION OF APPLIED DISABILITY RESEARCH (FIRAH)
2014

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“The goal of this literary review is to report on existing knowledge about applied research on the African continent, regarding the living conditions of people with disabilities, poverty, violence and sexual abuse especially regarding children and women with disabilities, community-based rehabilitation and employment”

Inside voices : CBR workers stories

OKUNE, Joan
Ed
2006

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This book is an output from three CBR writing workshops held in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi with the aim to facilitate the capacity of CBR workers to communicate their experiences thus increasing documentation of CBR practices in Africa. The book contains articles based on participants’ experience of CBR and is useful to anyone interested in CBR experiences in Kenya, Tanzania and Malawi

Disability and social responses in some Southern African nations : Angola, Botswana, Burundi, D.R. Congo (ex Zaire), Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Tanzania, Rwanda, Zambia, Zimbabwe. A bibliography, with introduction and some historical items

MILES, M
January 2003

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(From introducton) This bibliography, currently with approx. 1400 items, began in 1996 with a focus on the development of non-medical services concerned with mental retardation (mental handicap, learning difficulties, intellectual impairment) in Zambia. The development of services for people with other disabilities, and for children, and childrearing and language use, and then developments in neighbouring countries, soon began to be added. Then the weight of the new material outgrew the initial focus. Some biomedical papers have been added for their social contents or where a community-based or health education program concerned with biomedical conditions seems relevant to the development of disability awareness in communities. Newspaper and magazine-type articles have mostly been omitted. Available to download from the CIRRIE website

Children with hydrocephalus and spina bifida in East Africa : can family and community resources improve the odds?

MILES, M
2002

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Hydrocephalus and spina bifida are life threatening conditions that often result in severe dsabilities. Risks are much reduced by immediate surgery and careful managment, but neither has been available for most of the sub-Saharan African population. This paper traces the growth of solutions and some socio-cultural resources that historically have supported family and community care for children with severe disabilities, mainly in Tanzania, and nearby countries. Some community-based rehabilitation (CBR) work with children with spina bifida and hydrocephalus is described, and challenges to the CBR approach are noted from the increased survival of people with disabilities requiring complex care. More appropriate information, recognition of indigenous knowledge, enlistment of community resources and financial assistance are needed to enhance the lives of East Africans with hydrocephalus, spina bifida and other severely disabling conditions

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