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This booklet is the gateway for a training kit on personalised social support (PSS). The aim of this training course is to train social facilitators either in the personalised approach only, or in how to carry out a complete PSS process. The aim of this booklet is therefore to impart the methodological and educational components required to use the content of this training course to Handicap International’s (now Humanity and Inclusion) future PSS trainers. It therefore takes another look at the entire content of the PSS training course, explains the educational choices, presents the modules and other teaching tools created, and above all, provides advice/recommendations for future designers and trainers/facilitators on this theme. Throughout this booklet, internet links provide the reader with quick access to the content of training courses and other relevant resources

"This paper investigates the economic impact of health shocks on working-age adults in Vietnam during 2004-2008, using a fixed effects specification. Health shocks cover disability and morbidity and are measured by 'days unable to carry out regular activity', 'days in bed due to illness/injury', and 'hospitalization'. Overall, Vietnamese households are able to smooth total non-health expenditures in the short run in the face of a significant rise in out-of-pocket health expenditures. However, this is accomplished through vulnerability-enhancing mechanisms, especially in rural areas, including increased loans and asset sales and decreased education expenditures. Female-headed and rural households are found to be the least able to protect consumption. Results highlight the need to extend and deepen social protection and universal health coverage."

This paper focuses on the experiences of visually and hearing impaired children in Vietnam, a country where lay-based cultural beliefs predominantly shape understanding of any form of disability. The practice of ancestral worship informs a belief that disabilities are a punishment for wrong deeds in past lives, and as a result people with disabilities are often marginalized. Such reactions are sometimes taken to extremes: circumstantial evidence suggests that disabled children are even likely to be killed at birth. Others might simply be hidden away or rejected into the local orphanage. This paper discusses the therapeutic support on offer to children attending two types of educational settings, and explores how the wider school and local community considered and treated such children, examining the chosen forms of intervention in each institution from an ethnographic perspective. The first was a mainstream school with a specialist vocational training unit for visually impaired children, and the second was a specialist school for children who were hearing impaired and who were taught only to lip read and speak.

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

Universal health coverage (UHC) for inclusive and sustainable development synthesises the experiences from 11 countries—Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, France, Ghana, Indonesia, Japan, Peru, Thailand, Turkey, and Vietnam—in implementing policies and strategies to achieve and sustain UHC. These countries represent diverse geographic and economic conditions, but all have committed to UHC as a key national aspiration and are approaching it in different ways. The UHC policies for each country are examined around three common themes: (1) the political economy and policy process for adopting, achieving, and sustaining UHC; (2) health financing policies to enhance health coverage; and (3) human resources for health policies for achieving UHC. The path to UHC is specific to each country, but countries can benefit from experiences of others and avoid potential risks

"Poverty and disability are interrelated, but data that can disentangle the extent to which one causes the other is not available. However, data from Vietnam allows us to examine this interrelationship in a way not previously done. Using small area estimation techniques, we uncover three findings not yet reported in the literature. First, disability prevalence rates vary significantly within a county even at the district level. Second, the correlation between disability and poverty also varies at the district level. And most importantly, the strength of the correlation lessens based on district characteristics that can be affected by policy. Districts with better health care and infrastructure, such as roads and health services, show less of a link between disability and poverty, supporting the hypothesis that improvements in infrastructure and rehabilitation services can lessen the impact of disability on families with disabled members"
Working Paper Series, No 20

This report is the first systematic attempt to gather data on election access from Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines and Vietnam. The report reviews, for persons with disabilities, existing legal frameworks, challenges and barriers in exercising political rights and participation; best practices and innovations; and examples of how disabled persons organisations have been involved in electoral issues

The implementation of national health insurance reforms designed to move towards universal health coverage by 9 low-income and lower-middle-income countries in Africa and Asia  is reported. Five countries at intermediate stages of reform (Ghana, Indonesia, the Philippines, Rwanda, and Vietnam) and four at earlier stages (India, Kenya, Mali, and Nigeria) are considered. These countries’ approaches to raising prepaid revenues, pooling risk, and purchasing services are described using the functions-of-health-systems framework. Their progress across three dimensions of coverage: who, what services, and what proportion of health costs is assessed using the coverage-box framework. Patterns in the structure of these countries’ reforms including use of tax revenues to subsidise target populations and steps towards broader risk pools are identified. Trends in progress towards universal coverage, including increasing enrolment in government health insurance and a movement towards expanded benefits packages are reported. Common, comparable indicators of progress towards universal coverage are needed.

Purpose: This paper aims to explore the conditions needed for sustainable community based rehabilitation (CBR) programmes for persons with disabilities in Vietnam, and to identify the conditions and opportunities missing at present for the implementation of such programmes.

Method: Two CBR programmes in Vietnam, one medical based and one comprehensive (medical, educational, livelihood, social and empowerment), were evaluated for requirements and the current situation. Four factors were taken into account - human resources, organisational setting, social and political environment, and financing. Data were collected through interviews with programme managers and focus groups with stakeholders from provincial, district and communal levels, and with persons with disabilities. Persons with disabilities also completed a questionnaire to evaluate their satisfaction with the programme and their involvement in it.

Results: The conditions needed for a sustainable CBR programme were identified: availability of human resources, training, monitoring and evaluation, collaboration, commitment and financing. The conditions missing at present were: a stable pool of human resources (in both programmes), collaboration between sectors and with local authorities (in the medical programme), and knowledge about how to maintain financing (in both programmes). Persons with disabilities were more satisfied with their involvement in the comprehensive programme than in the medical programme. Stakeholders proposed opportunities to increase sustainability; highest priority was given to a collaboration plan (comprehensive CBR programme) and to involvement of other sectors in the CBR Steering Committee (medical CBR programme).

Conclusions: Few differences were found in conditions needed for sustainability of the medical and comprehensive programmes. The existence of disabled persons’ organisations (DPOs) seemed to be associated with the level of satisfaction persons with disabilities felt with their involvement in the programme.

Limitations: The People’s Committee was not involved in this research, although their input was perceived to be important. Generalisation of the results of this study should be done with caution because health system structures and organisational levels of CBR differ.

This report describes phase II of the Population Council Vietnam project on gender-based violence (GBV). The project involves both a hospital and community based intervention to address this problem in Hanoi and to conduct research to assess its effectiveness. This report is useful to practitioners interested in gender-based violence issues in Vietnam