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Analysing disability policy in Namibia: An occupational justice perspective

CHICHAYA, Tongai F.
JOUBERT, Robin W.E.
MCCOLL, Mary Ann
2018

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Background: The Namibian disability policy of 1997 has not been reviewed for about 20 years, which has raised concerns with persons with disabilities and stakeholders in the fields of disability and rehabilitation. In March 2017, the government publicised its intention to review the policy. Thus, this study’s purpose was to generate evidence that can contribute to the development of a more current disability policy that will promote occupational justice.

 

Objectives: The aim of the study was to develop an alternative disability policy option for Namibia and to present outcomes and trade-offs using a policy analysis approach while applying the occupational justice framework to gather evidence.

 

Method: A qualitative research design and Bardach’s eightfold path approach to policy analysis were used. Critical disability theory provided the theoretical framework. The occupational justice framework was the conceptual framework for the study. Evidence from preceding phases of this study and appropriate literature was utilised to construct possible disability policy alternatives in Namibia, set evaluative criteria, project outcomes and confront trade-offs.

 

Results: Three main disability policy alternatives emerged: access policy, support policy and universal coverage policy. Access policy had the fewest trade-offs, and the support policy had the most trade-offs in the Namibian context. Access policy was projected to foster occupational participation among persons with disabilities.

 

Conclusion: Results have implications for selecting disability policy alternatives that promote occupational participation and justice among persons with disabilities in Namibia. Furthermore, the study has implications for advancing the practice of occupational justice in disability policy formulation.

Part 2: The feasibility of utilising photovoice method and the World Health Organization Quality of Life instrument in evaluating the Community-Based Rehabilitation programme in Namibia: A pilot study

SHUMBA, Tonderai W.
MOODLEY, Indres
2018

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Background: Evaluation of Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) programmes in Namibia has been primarily quantitative, focusing mainly on outputs, including numbers of persons with disabilities served, referrals made and activities implemented. Little or no evidence is available on experiences and quality of life of persons with disabilities, despite the CBR programme being operational for more than 20 years. The 2011 World Report on Disability recommended the use of appropriate tools to fill the research gap by integrating the experiences of persons with disabilities and their quality of life.

 

Objectives: The overall objective of the larger cohort study is to develop a monitoring and evaluation tool that can measure and integrate the experiences of persons with disabilities and their quality of life within the context of the CBR Programme in Namibia.

 

Method: An adapted photovoice process was conducted with six purposively selected participants over a period of 1 month. The World Health Organization Community-Based Rehabilitation (WHO CBR) Matrix was used to identify the themes and subthemes. Participants were requested to complete the World Health Organization Quality of Life (abbreviated version) (WHOQOL-BREF) instrument at the end of the photovoice process to determine their quality of life.

 

Results: Administering the WHOQOL-BREF instrument at the end of the photovoice process measured both the quality of life of persons with disabilities and at the same time indicated the convergence and divergence in the two data collection methods. The study demonstrated a stronger convergence than divergence of the two methods. A feasibility criterion was mapped for future studies.

 

Conclusion: This study demonstrated that photovoice is a flexible method that can be used with a variety of disabilities and has the potential of being combined with the WHOQOL-BREF assessment form. A larger cohort study may consider implementing photovoice and WHOQOL-BREF on multiple study sites and be able to compare results, considering geographical and demographic variables. The feasibility of utilising each method alone and in combination offered valuable insights on future conceptual framing of CBR programme evaluation. This conceptual framing will allow CBR practitioners to appreciate how these two methods contribute to a rigorous process of CBR programme evaluation.

Challenges faced by parents of children with learning disabilities in Opuwo, Namibia

TADERERA, Clever
HALL, Herna
2017

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Background: Parenting children with learning disabilities requires a high level of knowledge and access to resources, information and services. In developing countries, however, these resources and services are not always available. Parents in Namibia, a developing country, therefore face challenges addressing children’s learning and other developmental disabilities, including challenges related to preventative and supportive interventions.


Objective: This research focuses on challenges faced by parents as they parent children with learning disabilities in Opuwo, Namibia.


Method: In-depth interviews were conducted with eight parents regarding the challenges they face in parenting their children with learning disabilities. Thematic analysis enabled the researchers to identify, analyse and report on themes that emerged from the qualitative interview data.


Results: Analysis of the interviews indicated that some participants had only a vague understanding of learning disabilities, as they did not have access to essential knowledge about this phenomenon. They also lacked an awareness of the availability of programmes, services and policies meant to benefit their children with learning disabilities. Participants voiced that they, their children with learning disabilities and community members have stereotypes and prejudices regarding learning disabilities. In this study, most of the children with learning disabilities were raised by single, unemployed parents who seemed to have access to less support from external sources than married couples parenting children with learning disabilities. These single parents are usually not married and because of lack of financial support from the other parent, the majority of them indicated that they struggle to meet the financial and material needs of their children.


Conclusion: The researchers concluded that the participants in this study experience a range of challenges in parenting their children with learning disabilities. The main challenges emanate from financial instability, as well as lack of knowledge regarding services and programmes for children with learning disabilities. This lack of knowledge on the part of participants could indicate poor policy education by policy implementers at grass-roots level.

Beneath the rhetoric: Policy to reduce the mental health treatment gap in Africa

COOPER, Sara
2015

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In this paper I problematize knowledge on reducing the ‘gap’ in treatment produced by 14 national mental health policies in Africa. To contextualize this analysis, I begin with a historic-political account of the emergence of the notion of primary health care and its entanglement within decolonization forces of the 1960s. I unpack how and why this concept was subsequently atrophied, being stripped of its more revolutionary sentiments from the 1980s. Against this backdrop, I show how, although the 14 national mental health policies are saturated with the rhetoric of primary health care and associated concepts of community participation and ownership, in practice they tend to marginalize local meaning-systems and endorse a top-down framework heavily informed by colonial medicine. The policies thus end up reproducing many of the very Eurocentric assumptions that the original primary health care notion sought to transcend. More specifically, the paradigms of evidence-based research/practice and individualised human rights become the gatekeepers of knowledge. These two paradigms, which are deeply embedded within contemporary global mental health discourse, are legislating what are legitimate forms of knowing, and by extension, valid forms of care. I argue that a greater appreciation of the primary health care concept, in its earliest formulation, offers a potentially fruitful terrain of engagement for developing more contextually-embedded and epistemologically appropriate mental health policies in Africa. This in turn might help reduce the current ‘gap’ in mental health care treatment so many countries on the continent face.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 3

Learning from doing the EquitAble project: Content, context, process, and impact of a multi-country research project on vulnerable populations in Africa

MACLACHLAN, Mac
AMIN, Mutamad
MJI, Gubela
MANNAN, Hasheem
MCVEIGH, Joanne
MCAULIFFE, Eilish
AMADHILA, Elina
MUNTHALI, Alister
EIDE, Arne H
DUBE, A Kudakwashe
2014

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Background: The ‘EquitAble’ project carried out content analyses of policies and collected and analysed qualitative and quantitative data concerning access to health services in Sudan, Malawi, Namibia and South Africa. Our particular concern was to address the situation of people with disabilities, although not in isolation from other marginalised or vulnerable groups.

 

Objectives: This article reports on the content, context, process and impact of project EquitAble, funded by the European Commission Seventh Research Framework Programme, which brought together researchers from Ireland, Norway, South Africa, Namibia, Sudan and Malawi.

 

Method: After the 4-year project ended in February 2013, all members of the consortium were asked to anonymously complete a bespoke questionnaire designed by the coordinating team. The purpose of the questionnaire was to capture the views of those who collaborated on the research project in relation to issues of content, context, process and impact of the EquitAble project.

 

Results: Our results indicated some of the successes and challenges encountered by our consortium.

 

Conclusion: We identified contextual and process learning points, factors often not discussed in papers, which typically focus on the reporting of the ‘content’ of results.

Core Concepts of Human Rights and Inclusion of Vulnerable Groups in the Namibian Policy on Orthopaedic Technical Services

VANROOY, G
AMADHILA, E
MANNAN, H
MCVEIGH, J
MACLACHLAN, M
AMIN, M
2012

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Purpose: Despite a highly progressive legislation and clear governmental commitment, living conditions among persons with disabilities in Namibia are systematically lower than among persons without disabilities. This implies that persons with disabilities are denied equal opportunities to participate and contribute to society, and consequently are denied their human rights.

 

Methods: EquiFrame, an innovative policy analysis framework, was used to analyse Namibian Policy on Orthopaedic Technical Services. EquiFrame evaluates the degree of stated commitment of an existing health policy to 21 Core Concepts of human rights and to 12 Vulnerable Groups, guided by the ethos of universal, equitable and accessible health services.

 

Results: A number of Core Concepts of human rights and Vulnerable Groups were found to be absent in the Namibian Policy on Orthopaedic Technical Services, and its Overall Summary Ranking was assessed as Moderate.

 

Conclusion and Implications: The Namibian health sector faces significant challenges in addressing inequities with respect to its policy on Orthopaedic Technical Services. If policy content, or policy ‘on the books’, is not inclusive of vulnerable groups and observant of core concepts of human rights, then health practices are also unlikely to do so. This paper illustrates that EquiFrame can provide the strategic guidance for the reform of Namibian Orthopaedic Technical Services policy, leading to universal and equitable access to healthcare.

Social protection : how important are the national plans of action for orphans and vulnerable children?

SABATES-WHEELER, Rachel
PELHAM, Lissa
October 2006

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This is a review of 14 national plans of action (NPA), or in the absence of a NPA, outputs from the rapid assessment analysis and action planning (RAAAP) work for orphans and children made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. It analyses the way that issues of social protection are incorporated into these plans and highlights areas within the plans where social protection activity may be needed to achieve stated outcomes. There are also country by country summaries of the social protection content of each NPA

Civil society involvement in rapid assessment, analysis and action planning (RAAAP) for orphans and vulnerable children : an independent review

GOSLING, Louisa
July 2005

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This review explores civil society organisations' experiences of the Rapid Assessement, Analysis and Action Planning (RAAAP) process - an initiative launched by USAID, UNICEF, UNAIDS, and the World Food Program - for orphans and other vulnerable children in November 2003. It comprises of a review of where civil society organisations were involved and where they were not and an overview of the process of their invovlement. It also offers recommendations for existing and future RAAAPs to ensure greater invovlement of civil society organisations, and includes individual reports on the 16 sub-Saharan African countries invovled in the first round of RAAAP in 2004

Empowering youth and connecting schools : lessons from the SchoolNet Namibia approach

BALLANTYNE, Peter
February 2004

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Schools in developing countries are beginning to get computers and access to the Internet. This article draws on the SchoolNet Namibia approach and its achievements. It suggests that programmes like this should give priority to the provision of affordable access using open platforms, pay attention to longer term cost of ownership issues, leverage change through partnerships, work closely with governments, involve school principals and teachers, and seek to ensure that necessary capacities are developed in schools themselves

Tied up in a rope of sand. TFD : cultural action or development utility?

MAVROCORDATOS, Alex
2003

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Discusses the tension and synergy of culture and participatory development through examples of theatre for development experiences in Mali and Namibia. The author describes performances and processes for setting up performance activities in villages, some of which had their own forms of narrative drama, and others which developed these with external support. The article discusses the implications of importing and imposing cultural forms to achieve project goals, and contrasts this with the ethos of theatre for development, which seeks to engage community members in a dialogue with development workers in order to foster participation in and ownership of development activities

Living conditions among people with activity limitations in Namibia : a representative, national survey

EIDE, Arne H
VAN ROOY, Gert
LOEB, Mitch E
2003

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This report presents the findings of a study about the livelihoods of people with disability in Namibia using data from household surveys with and without people with disabilities. The report, one of a series of regional research reports to establish baseline data on living conditions among people in Southern Africa, looks at the fields of health, employment, education, living conditions and services for people with disabilities

Mainstreaming HIV/AIDS : looking beyond awareness

WILKINS, Marissa
VASANI, Dolar
2002

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The social and environmental circumstances that lead vulnerable people to have unprotected sex, exposing them to infections, have to be resolved through addressing the causes of poverty, gender discrimination, and the use of sex as a commodity. This book addresses the impact of HIV without prejudice, by taking a human rights stance. It is useful for trainers, programme planners, policy-makers and CBR programmes

Best practices on indigenous knowledge

UNITED NATIONS EDUCATION SCIENCE AND CULTURE ORGANIZATION (UNESCO). Management of Social Transformations Programme (MOST)
NETHERLANDS ORGANIZATION FOR INTERNATIONAL COOPERATION IN HIGHER EDUCATION. Centre for International Research and Advisory Networks (NUFFIC/CIRAN)
Eds
1999

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This publication provides a series of case studies to illustrate how indigenous knowledge (IK) can be used to create sustainable development. It aims to suggest, by example, guidelines for development planning, as the practices described may give policy makers and development practitioners a deeper insight into the ecological and cultural complexity of sustainable development. Includes basic definition of IK and related terms, and indexes by country and theme

Psychosocial support portal

REGIONAL PSYCHOSOCIAL SUPPORT INITIATIVE (REPSSI)

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The Psychosocial support portal contains links to documents rpoduced by and with REPSSI. These include reports of programme acitivites; manuals, guides and toolkits; country responses to children and HIV/AIDS; training manuals; research papers; and information about training and education

AFRO barometer : a comparative series of national public attitude surveys on democracy, markets and civil society in Africa

Institute for Democracy in South Africa (IDASA)
Center for Democracy and Development, (CDD-Ghana)
Michigan State University (MSU)

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Afrobarometer is a state-of-the-art research survey that measures the social, political and economic atmosphere in Africa. Afrobarometer surveys are conducted in more than a dozen countries. Because there are a standard set of questions, countries can be systematically compared and, ultimately, trends in public attitudes can be tracked over time. Each survey collects data about individual attitudes and behavior. Surveys have been done on democracy, governance, livelihoods, macro-economics and markets, social capital, crime, participation and national identity

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