Health and Rehabilitation

Poverty and disability each bring health challenges: when the two occur together problems can be intensified. Our community-based projects focus on enabling people to play active roles in their families and societies.

Our task is to build local capacity among both families and local services. Since early detection and rehabilitation is often provided by family members, we train them in the best ways to help their relatives with disabilities. In creating and strengthening local services, our projects help make them more accessible.

Below is an abstract of a chapter on community based services in the Leonard Cheshire Disability book publication 'Disability and Inclusive Development'.

Every nation has to face the challenges of disability but these are particularly marked among the world’s poorer nations. In recent years many new insights have been gained on assisting children and adults with disabilities to live fuller lives in community settings. Inclusive community services are often the most effective in ensuring holistic and accessible support that enables greater freedom of lifestyle choices. They provide person-centred care and support services within the individual’s home and community.

Three themes re-echo throughout contemporary writings and modern policy statements:

• People with disabilities have many needs in common with their fellow citizens who are ‘non-disabled’ and they are entitled to the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else;
• The lives of people with disabilities are richer if they remain connected with their families and have access to community resources and amenities;
• A key role of staff specialising in disability work is for them to share their knowledge and expertise so that many more people can be supported in their local communities.

These services nurture the skills and resources available within communities and help them cope with the demands of poverty as well as disability. They mobilise the supports available in society and work in partnership with other agencies to provide a better quality of life for everyone in the family. They seek to remove the attitudinal and as well as physical barriers many people with disabilities face in their daily lives. Their goal is to encourage the social inclusion of people with disabilities in education, in employment and community life.

The Chapter author is Roy McConkey, Professor of Learning Disability at the University of Ulster, Northern Ireland and has worked over 30 years in the field of intellectual disability.