48 research outputs found
A study to explore the capacity of family and service providers to facilitate participation of disabled youth in accessing opportunities in skills development and employment in Cofimvaba, Eastern Cape
No full textIncludes abstract.Includes bibliographical references.The study aimed to explore the capacity of family and service providers to facilitate the participation of disabled youth in accessing skills development and employment opportunities in rural areas. The objectives were to describe the family and service providers' understanding of disability; identify visions and strategies for promoting inclusion of disabled youth in skills development and employment opportunities; analyse the provision of services related to the economic development of disabled youth; identify the gaps in skills in facilitating disabled youth's transition in the economic development; and identify the available material resources for economic development of disabled youth
Enhancing the public sectors’ capacity for inclusive economic participation of disabled youth in rural communities
Get PDFCITATION: Ned, L. & Lorenzo, T. 2016. Enhancing the public sectors’ capacity for inclusive economic participation of disabled youth in rural communities. African Journal of Disability, 5(1):1-9, doi:10.4102/ajod.v5i1.189.The original publication is available at http://www.ajod.orgPublication of this article was funded by the Stellenbosch University Open Access Fund.ENGLISH SUMMARY : Background: The capacity of service providers in the public sector to deliver inclusive services is essential to implement strategies that will allow the full participation of disabled youth in development opportunities in the rural context.
Objective: The article sets to describe the capacity of service providers in facilitating participation of disabled youth in economic development opportunities.
Method: An instrumental, embedded single case study informed the research design. The sample consisted of five disabled youth, four family members as well as six service providers. Data was gathered through in-depth individual interviews and focus group discussions. Data analysis was done inductively and thematically. In the discussion, the interpretation used organisational capacity elements as a framework.
Findings: The theme on service providers indicates their understanding of disability as still a multifaceted and a challenging issue with different orientations to service delivery based on understanding of impairment and disability. There is a dominant focus on impairment and negative attitudes.
Discussion: An asset building approach could facilitate awareness of capacities of disabled youth and thus shift negative attitudes to an enabling attitude. The vague strategies for youth and women that are described as inclusive are a misrepresentation of the reality of experiences of disabled youth.
Conclusion: An appreciative process of facilitating a holistic understanding of the needs of disabled people is needed to assist service providers to reconceptualise disability within an expansive framework.http://www.ajod.org/index.php/ajod/article/view/189Publisher's versio
A university’s response to people with disabilities in Worcester, Western Cape
Get PDFCITATION: Muller, J. V., Ned, L. & Boshoff, H. 2019. A university’s response to people with disabilities in Worcester, Western Cape. African Journal of Disability, 8:a439, doi:10.4102/ajod.v8i0.439.The original publication is available at https://ajod.orgBackground: The call for institutions of higher education to foster interaction with communities and ensure training is responsive to the needs of communities is well documented. In 2011, Stellenbosch University collaborated with the Worcester community to identify the needs of people with disabilities within the community. How the university was engaging with these identified needs through student training still needed to be determined.
Objectives: This study describes the engagement process of reciprocity and responsivity in aligning needs identified by persons with disability to four undergraduate allied health student training programmes in Worcester, Western Cape.
Method: A single case study using the participatory action research appraisal methods explored how undergraduate student service learning was responding to 21 needs previously identified in 2011 alongside persons with disability allowing for comprehensive feedback and a collaborative and coordinated response.
Results: Students’ service learning activities addressed 14 of the 21 needs. Further collaborative dialogue resulted in re-grouping the needs into six themes accompanied by a planned collaborative response by both community and student learning to address all 21 needs previously identified.
Conclusion: Undergraduate students’ service learning in communities has the potential to meet community identified needs especially when participatory action research strategies are implemented. Reciprocity exists when university and community co-engage to construct, reflect and adjust responsive service learning. This has the potential to create a collaborative environment and process in which trust, accountability, inclusion and communication is possible between the university and the community.https://ajod.org/index.php/ajod/article/view/439Publisher's versio
‘Services were completely shut down’: access to rehabilitation in the rural Eastern Cape Province of South Africa during COVID-19
No full textIntroduction: Persons with disabilities living in rural areas were disproportionately affected during the COVID-19 pandemic. This population, with a higher propensity for poor health and higher need for health services, bore the brunt of adverse effects of emergency regulations that cancelled or restricted access to rehabilitation. South African legislative and policy frameworks support the availability and promotion of disability and rehabilitation services as priority healthcare programs for all. Rehabilitation services in the country were, however, underresourced prior to the pandemic, and halted during lockdowns because of their non-essential status in the healthcare system. Within this context, this study explored the experiences of rehabilitation practitioners in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods: Forming part of a mixed study on inclusiveness of pandemic responses to people with disabilities, we reviewed government responses across different African countries, analysed the South African government responses to the pandemic and conducted interviews with rehabilitation practitioners in the rural Eastern Cape Province of South Africa. This article reports on the qualitative interviews, while the reviews and survey findings were published elsewhere. Rehabilitation practitioners were recruited from a provincial rehabilitation forum for practitioners who work in the public health facilities in the province. A combination of online and telephone individual interviews were conducted with participants, as well as three asynchronous interviews using Google Forms and WhatsApp. Transcriptions of interviews were analysed inductively and thematically through coding and categorisation.
Results: Eight practitioners participated in the study (a response rate of 8.4%). This included six physiotherapists and two occupational therapists. Three themes developed from data reported by the participants: reconfiguring rehabilitation services, experienced impact on rehabilitation service delivery and exacerbation of pre-pandemic rehabilitation shortfalls.
Discussion: The low priority of rehabilitation services as part of health services exacerbated pre-pandemic barriers for persons with disabilities. The cessation of such services rendered rehabilitation wholly inaccessible to persons with disabilities in the province, with detrimental effects on their function, health and wellbeing. Practitioners suggested that integrated collaborative health and rehabilitation service delivery enabled the continuation of some service aspects to some persons with disabilities. Initiatives and adaptations to services were driven by practitioners, although often in the absence of clear directives from the Department of Health. Some alternative methods of delivery (eg telerehabilitation) that were deployed elsewhere, were not as accessible and viable for use in the rural Eastern Cape Province, which has poor technological infrastructure and connectivity.
Conclusion: The pandemic challenged rehabilitation services as it remained deprioritised. However, rehabilitation also adapted, with practitioners strategising on ways of reconfiguring these rehabilitation services. Health systems responses to emergent health events should include and capacitate rehabilitation services to support preventive and promotive approaches
The creation of debility and disability in South Africa: Colonial and apartheid encounters
Get PDFThe global legacy of colonialism has historically been studied in disciplines ranging from sociology and human geography to development economics, political sciences and international relations. However, over the years, the field of public health has also seen an emergence of research on the impacts of colonialism on the health outcomes of populations in the Global South. Operating at the nexus of the field of disability studies and decoloniality, I critically historicise South Africa’s colonial and apartheid encounters, with specific reference to how they created debility and disability. I argue that, while disability existed in pre-colonial African societies, including in South Africa, it was not deemed as an impairment that eroded the humanity and value of persons with disabilities. The construction of disability as an impairment, and the consequences related to this construction, emerged out of colonial and apartheid encounters. Both epistemologically and through layered forms of violence, colonialism and apartheid created debility and disability. Situating discourse in the field of disability studies within the context of colonial and apartheid encounters in the Global South in general, and South Africa in particular, is crucial. It is especially necessary that such discourse be anchored in decolonial theorisation in order that the particularities of the experience of disability in post-colonial and post-apartheid societies can be understood within this context.
Significance:
Research and theoretical orientations of disability studies remain profoundly skewed towards accounts from the Global North. One approach to correcting this bias is that of engaging with debility and disability in the context of colonial experience. Operating at the nexus of the field of disability studies and decoloniality, I critically historicise South Africa’s colonial and apartheid encounters, with specific reference to how they created debility and disability. The analysis lays the foundation for theorising the interconnected systems of post-colonial violence and oppression, as well as the interlocking systems of power that continue to marginalise persons with disabilities
Reconnecting with Indigenous knowledge in education : exploring possibilities for health and well-being in Xhora, South Africa
Get PDFThesis (PhD)--Stellenbosch University, 2019.ENGLISH SUMMARY : Owing to coloniality, Eurocentric and western thinkers have been privileged in knowledge production while African indigenous thinkers and knowers have been subjugated.
Consequently, western knowledge has been described as universal knowledge, while indigenous people’s knowledges remain characterized as backward and primitive. In this arrangement, the current education system reproduces inequities of knowledges. How this knowledge arrangement influences the persisting negative health status among indigenous
people, and the role of formal schooling in this, remains unexplored in South Africa and beyond.
There is a need to explore and describe from the perspectives of indigenous people the potential relevance of indigenous knowledges in transforming the formal education system for better health and well-being.
Using case study design supported by narrative inquiry as methodological frameworks, I facilitated a case of narratives with AmaBomvane in Xhora (Eastern Cape province, SA) to:
• describe AmaBomvane’s rural experience of the influence of the formal education
system on their Indigenous traditions and knowledges and their links to health and
well-being;
• explore what stakeholders in these communities (elders, youth and teachers) identify as some of the Indigenous knowledges and ways of teaching and learning; and
• explore how the identified knowledges and teaching and learning strategies of
AmaBomvane can inform curriculum development and implementation in the formal schooling system.
The case study provided contextual boundedness and situatedness to the research, while narrative inquiry uncovered the stories that formed the basis for exploring and describing the case in question. The participants played an active role in guiding the research process.
Indigenous methods (talking circles and storytelling using the sagacity approach) were used to collect narrative, primary data from residents of four sampled villages. In-depth interviews with teachers and principals from schools across the villages and other methods such as
researcher observations and spontaneous conversations were used. The sagacity approach, reflexivity, reciprocity and continuous relationship-building grounded these methods.
A case of seven co-constructed narratives highlighted three typologies (Amaqaba,
Amagqobhoka, and Agonizers: the uncomfortable in-betweeners) related to the complex interactions and dynamics between formal schooling and the communities and/or homes.
These typologies reveal the intersecting operations of coloniality of power, being, knowledge and doing. The literacies of AmaBomvane challenge the academy by bringing considerable insight into our understanding of knowledge itself, learning and the purpose of education and
curriculum. The inseparable link between everyday doing, knowing and being was
highlighted as central to knowledge production. AmaBomvane’s conceptualization of knowledge also highlighted an inextricable link between health and education, thus advocating for an education that enhances living well.
In conclusion, colonial education emerged as a potential negative social determinant of AmaBomvane’s health as it produces people who are deeply alienated from themselves, their lands, cultures, ancestors, languages and knowledges. Its historical roots, forced assimilation
and the unquestionable characteristic of curriculum create a colonising attitude amongst learners and educators. I therefore argue that coloniality and colonial education be recognised as broader social determinants of ill health. I argue that centering indigenous knowledges and cultures within the formal schooling curriculum may contribute to strengthening positive indigenous identities, thus contributing to better physical, social, mental, emotional and
spiritual health and well-being. There is an urgent need to prepare educators who are socially conscious and competent to facilitate a health-enhancing curriculum that enables learners to live well. Given the revealed inextricable link between health and education, I also recommend that South African national curriculum immerse health and well-being as a core
area of learning. I have thus developed an indigenous-decolonial framework for
reconstructing curriculum for health and well-being as a guide.AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING : Kolonialisme het tot gevolg gehad dat die Euro-sentriese en westerse denkers voordeel trek in so verre die verkryging van kennis. Dit is voor die hand liggend dat die westerse kennis as die universele kennis aanvaar word, terwyl die kennis van verskeie etniese groepe in Afrika as primitief beskou word. In die huidige onderwysstel kom heelwat ongelykhede van kennis voor. Met die formele skolestelsel word die gesondheidsorg in Suid-Akrika ook nie ontgin nie. Dit is uiters belangrik dat die relevansie van etniese kennis ondersoek word om
sodoende die formele onderwysstelsel te transformeer sodat die gesondheidsorg en welsyn van die etniese groepe bevorder word.
Met behulp van ‘n metodiese raamwerk verwys ek graag na die geval van AmaBomvame in Xhora (Oos-Kaap).
Daar is gefokus op die volgende:
• die vervreemding van etniese kennis wat AmaBomvane ondervind het met die
formele opvoedkunde.
• Die gaping wat veroorsaak is deur die vervreemding en onkunde binne die
onderwysstelsel.
• Daar word gekyk na maniere hoe dit verhoed kan word dat die kinders vervreemd raak van hul taal, kultuur en herkoms.
Deur hierdie gevallestudie is die ligging en grense aan die navorsing verskaf terwyl die ondersoek van die vertellings die basis gevorm het waarop die navorsing gedoen is. Die deelnemers aan hierdie studies, het ‘n aktiewe rol in die uitvoering van die proses gespeel. Etniese gespreksvoering, groepsbesprekings en vertellings is gebruik om die inligting van die inwoners van 4 stamme bymekaar te maak. Daar is ook in diepte gesprekke met onderwysers
en skoolhoofde gehou om meer inligting van die stamme en etniese groepe in te win. Die interpersoonlike verhoudings onder die mense van die stamme het bygedra tot die navorsing.
‘n Gevallestudie is gedoen waar 7 vertellings saamgestel is om die tipologie van 3 groepe (Amaqaba, Amagqobhoka en Agonizers) te beklemtoon wat almal te doen gehad het met die interaksies en dinamika tussen formele opvoedkunde en die etniese gemeenskappe. Hierdie
tipologieë het die bedrywighede van kolonialiteit van mag, kennis en bestaansreg onthul. Die geletterdes van AmaBomvane daag die akademisie uit deur goeie insig te bring tot die begrip van die kennis, en die doel van opvoedkunde en die kurrikulum. Die onlosmaaklike skakel
tussen die daaglikse doen en late, kennis en welstand is beklemtoon. Die AmaBomvane se begrip van die kennis is ook uitgelig as ‘n onlosmaaklike skakel tussen gesondheidsorg en opvoedkunde, dus is voorspraak gemaak vir opvoedkunde om die welsynsorg en lewens van die etniese groepe te bevorder.
Ten slotte kan ons sê dat die koloniale opvoedkunde gwys het dat dit ‘n negatiewe uitwerking op die sosiale vlak van die AmaBomvane se welsyn gehad het aangesien dit veroorsaak het dat die mense hulself van hul land, kulture, voorvaders, taal en kennis gedistansieer het. Die historiese agtergrond het daartoe gelei dat onderwysers en leerlinge ongevraagde karaktereienskappe geplaas het op ‘n koloniale benadering in die kurrikulum skep. Ek stel dus dat erken moet word dat kolonialisme en koloniale opvoedkunde sosiale gedrag en gesondheidsorg benadeel. Ek glo dus dat etniese kennis en kultuur binne die formele omderrig wel kan bydra tot die versterking van etniese identiteite om sodoende beter fisiese, sosiale, geestelike gesondheid asook welstand te waarborg.
Dit is dus van uiterste belang dat opvoeders wat bevoegd is en ‘n sosiale gewete het, opgelei moet word om leerders te ondersteun om ‘n beter leefwyse aan te leer om sodoende hul
algehele welstand te bevorder. Met die gegewe inligting rakende die onlosmaaklike skakel tussen opvoedkunde en gesondheidsorg, stel ek voor dat die Suid-Afrikaanse nasionale kurrikulum aangepas sal word met gesondheidsorg en welsyn as die kern van opvoedkunde.
Ek het ‘n etniese de-koloniale raamwerk ontwerp wat gebruik kan word as ‘n riglyn om die kurrikulum te verbeter.Doctora
Enhancing public sectors’ capacity for inclusive economic participation of disabled youth in rural communities
Get PDFBackground: The capacity of service providers in the public sector to deliver inclusive services is essential to implement strategies that will allow the full participation of disabled youth in development opportunities in the rural context.
Objective: The article sets to describe the capacity of service providers in facilitating participation of disabled youth in economic development opportunities.
Method: An instrumental, embedded single case study informed the research design. The sample consisted of five disabled youth, four family members as well as six service providers. Data was gathered through in-depth individual interviews and focus group discussions. Data analysis was done inductively and thematically. In the discussion, the interpretation used organisational capacity elements as a framework.
Findings: The theme on service providers indicates their understanding of disability as still a multifaceted and a challenging issue with different orientations to service delivery based on understanding of impairment and disability. There is a dominant focus on impairment and negative attitudes.
Discussion: An asset building approach could facilitate awareness of capacities of disabled youth and thus shift negative attitudes to an enabling attitude. The vague strategies for youth and women that are described as inclusive are a misrepresentation of the reality of experiences of disabled youth.
Conclusion: An appreciative process of facilitating a holistic understanding of the needs of disabled people is needed to assist service providers to reconceptualise disability within an expansive framework
So from Here Where Do We Go? A Focus on the Sexuality of Women with Disabilities in Africa: A Narrative Review
No full text
