Resources search

Barriers to Early Diagnosis, Intervention and Social Integration of Children with Developmental Disabilities: A Qualitative Study from Rural Villages and a Poor Urban Settlement of Bangalore, South India

GEORGE, C E
NORMAN, G
BENJAMIN, T E
MUKHERJEE, D
2014

Expand view

Purpose: Children with developmental disabilities, if given skilled early intervention, have the potential to lead productive lives and can contribute to the social and economic development of their communities. This study explores the barriers to early diagnosis and intervention for children with developmental disabilities who live in rural and urban areas of Bangalore city, India.

 

Methods: The study was conducted in selected villages of Devanahalli Taluk in Bangalore Rural District, and in Devara Jeevanahalli (DJ Halli), a shanty town in Bangalore city. The qualitative study design consisted of in-depth interviews and focus group discussions (FGDs).Parents of children with developmental disabilities, doctors practising in the area and school teachers were interviewed using a purposive sampling framework. An inductive, data-driven thematic analysis was carried out.

 

Results: The physician-related barriers were identified as lack of skills and understanding of children with developmental disabilities, lack of knowledge and resources, lack of specialist back-up services, and communication difficulties with regard to conveying bad news to clients. Parent-related barriers were financial constraints, delay in accepting the diagnosis, and prevalent myths, beliefs and stigma pertaining to disability. The teachers viewed children with special needs as an additional responsibility, and were also apprehensive about the attitudes and interaction of other children at school with children with disabilities.

Inheritance, poverty, and disability

GROCE, Nora Ellen
LONDON, Jillian
STEIN, Michael Ashley
2014

Expand view

Inheritance is a significant means of transferring wealth from one generation to the next, and therefore increasingly attracts attention from researchers and pol- icy-makers working on intergenerational and multidimensional poverty. How- ever, until now disabled persons have been overlooked in these discussions. This oversight is particularly unfortunate because, as a group, the estimated one bil- lion people with disabilities (some 15% of the world’s population) are among the poorest and most marginalized of the global population. Over the past dec- ade, a small but growing literature has examined the recursive connections between poverty and disability throughout the developing world. In this paper, we argue that disabled individuals are routinely denied inheritance rights in many low-income and middle-income countries, and that this is a significant and largely unrecognized contributor to their indigence. The denial of inheritance is both a social justice issue and a practice that can no longer be overlooked if disabled persons are to be brought into the development mainstream.

Empowerment in Community-based Rehabilitation and Disability-inclusive Development

KUIPERS, P
2014

Expand view

Purpose: This paper seeks to contribute to discussion on the understanding and measurement of empowerment of people with disabilities in developing countries. A novel, text analysis approach was used to depict the way in which empowerment is characterised in conventional measures in Western settings. This was then compared with depictions and analyses of the way in which empowerment is characterised in documents that have more relevance to developing countries.

 

Method: First, computer-based content and concept analysis was applied to three key empowerment measures. This was compared with analysis of responses to a recent online survey of empowerment conducted by the United NationsDepartment of Economic and Social Affairs (UN-DESA). Visual representations in the form of “word clouds” were generated to depict key concepts within each data source. Second, to provide specific detail regarding how empowerment has been described in documents which relate to developing countries, more detailed computer-assisted lexical analysis was performed on the text of responses to the UN-DESA survey, and on the text of the Empowerment component of the CBR Guidelines.

 

Results: Initial “word clouds” illustrated considerable discrepancy between concepts inherent in the three most relevant empowerment measures when compared with responses to the UN-DESA survey relating to empowerment in a development context. Subsequent lexical analysis depicted greater specificity and ranked the concepts associated with empowerment in key disability and development-related documents.

 

Conclusions: Conventional Western measures of individual empowerment may not adequately encompass the broader social, economic and community orientation of empowerment as described in documents from disability and development circles. Further research is required to substantiate these novel and speculative indications.

E-bulletin