Children with disabilities still neglected in homes

This week, James (not real name), an eight year-old-boy, was discharged from Kagando Hospital in Kasese District after nearly three weeks of treatment and rehabilitation.
James is crippled and can neither stand nor walk by himself. He only crawls on the ground to move from one point to another.
Mid-January, James was discovered tied to a tree in the family compound in Muhokya Sub-county, Kasese District. Ms Elizabeth Nzerebende, the Muhokya Sub-county Community Development Officer, narrates that she and health inspectors discovered the boy during a home-to-home monitoring routine about pit-latrine coverage, sanitation and hygiene in homes.
“We accidentally bumped into the boy’s compound while monitoring latrine and other basic sanitation availability in homes. A young boy who pointed at a cup in a sauce pan, attracted the health assistant’s attention,” says Ms Nzerebende.

While other children went to school or played in the community, James was always confined to the tree. This, according to Ms Nzerebende, was done by Jame’s stepmother. For one-and-a-half years following his parents’ divorce, the boy saw no joy of playing with other children because the stepmother would tie him up from 8am until sunset.
By the time he was discovered, James looked like a three-year-old because of malnourishment, resulting from being denied food.
“Abuse of children with disability is real. When you look at that rope tied to the tree, you may think that it’s a goat’s rope. Surprisingly, the stepmother was not bothered, ashamed nor concerned,” Ms Nzerebende adds.

James is not alone. There are quite many children who have not seen the light of the current advocacy and government’s call to parents not to neglect children with disability.
Police arrested James’ stepmother in Muhokya but later released her on bond, pending further investigations.

His treatment at Kagando hospital has reunited James with his birth mother. They are back home at Muhokya trading centre relying on support from Hope Project Uganda, a charity organisation that has risen to the occasion following local media reports about James’ plight.
They have rented a house in Muhokya trading centre to settle the mother and also procured a wheelchair for James.
There are many reasons why children with disability in rural communities have been stigmatised right from family level. Some female children with disabilities, after being abandoned at home by family members, have been subjected to defilement and rape.

As famous boxing icon, the late Muhammad Ali once said; “It’s the repetition of affirmations that leads to belief. And once that belief becomes a deep conviction, things begin to happen.”
These children with disabilities can make it in life if mentored with assurance of a better tomorrow despite their condition.
Upon his first visit to Uganda last month, Peter Hervey Kersten, a 16-year-old teenager from the Netherlands town of Henmen could not stop shaking his head after seeing what the children and fellow youth with disability are going through.

“My experience with a young man almost my age, whom I found during an ordination Mass in northern Uganda, was scary. This young man told me he has no chance of continuing with education because the parents cannot offer much. Then I asked, what is the role of government?” Kersten says.
We found this boy, walking on crutches in Nsambya, Kampala on January 7. He has been disabled from the time of birth because of having weak muscles in his limbs.
Kersten has undergone several surgeries to try to make his body physically able to hold him on the clutches, otherwise he would have been crippled. His rehabilitation after surgeries has been the role of 19-year-old sibling Mr Harm Kersten, a student of physiotherapy.

At the ordination Mass, where his friend Sander Kesseler, a Dutch national, got his priestly ordination under Gulu Archdiocese on January 5, Kersten participated fully by taking one of the biblical readings of the day. To him, this was one way of encouraging other youths that once encouraged and accorded the best care, people with disabilities of any kind are valuable to the society in which they live.
“Back home in the Netherlands, it is the responsibility of the government to work with the family to make sure children with disability are taken care of. Their education is the role of the government. But also, the families are able to take care of their children without going to those centres,” says Kersten.

At the moment, Kersten is studying agriculture at Kandinsky College, Nymegen but wants to join politics to do more advocacy and influence policy making that will ensure a better tomorrow for the people with disabilities.
For the case of Uganda, Kestern advises that government would find it hard to provide psycho-social support to children with disabilities if they are scattered in homes. He feels that, at a certain stage in life especially when they are school-going age, these children need to leave in centres where government is fully in charge.

“In these centres, these children will be introduced to different life skills depending on their form of disability. I would love to come back to Uganda and go around the country, visiting the youth in these centres and encourage them not to hate themselves,” he suggests.
In the Netherlands, government encourages families to report to the relevant agencies whenever they are having challenges with caring for the disabled child, Kersten says.
Uganda’s government has been promoting, protecting and advocating for equal rights for both the children with disabilities and those who are physically stable.

Government policy for persons with disabilities

Through the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (MoGLSD) government has skills training for the people with disabilities and the Ministry of Education is also working on Special Needs Education. The Commissioner for Elderly and Disability in the Gender ministry, Mr Sam Masaba Wekesa, says through community sensitisation, the government has reduced the cases of children with disability being confined in homes.
Mr Wekesa says government has had plans to establish children with disability centres but at the moment it is encouraging community based rehabilitation so that parents and neighbours appreciate their responsibility of bringing up a child.

“We don’t have centres for children but there are vocational skills training centres in the country. These centres are well managed by the government to skill the youth with disability,” says Mr Wekesa.
The commissioner says the country has five vocational skills training centres for PWDs. He says, the Ministry of Education has also been at the forefront of ensuring the children with disabilities are put in school right from primary through all ranks of education.
In some districts, there is an assistant inspector of schools in-charge of special needs education. The special needs children are now examined by the Uganda National Examinations Board (Uneb) at Primary Seven, Senior Four and Seniour Six where they do the same set of exams with others but using specialised method of assessment.

Mr Wekesa say government has not looked into establishing many training institutions for the PWDs because they are expensive to run due to costly equipment.
Across the country, PWDs who have undergone skills training do sweater knitting, tailoring and garment cutting, secretarial services, among others.