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Teachers’ Perceptions of Disabilities on the Island of Roatán, Honduras

SCHNEIDER, Cornelia
2017

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Purpose: Roatán, a small island in Honduras, is home to six ethnic groups. Due to financial constraints, many children have limited access to schooling. This article is a study on teachers’ perceptions of disabilities and students with disabilities and inclusive education on the island.

 

Method: Twenty seven teachers working in public and private schools, and schools funded by the World Bank, were interviewed in March-April of 2014 in order to explore cultural and social representations of disabilities on the island.

 

Results: The findings show that many of the teachers’ representations can be analysed under the lens of different models of disability - the medical model, the social model, and a religious-moral model. Inclusive education is perceived less as a means of including children with disabilities in the regular classroom, and more as a method of creating institutions to take care of their needs.

 

Conclusion: There is a strong intersection of poverty, post-colonialism and disability which makes working under an inclusive lens very difficult for teachers. The cultural norms influence ideas of normalcy and disabilities, and the blame is on parents for having children with disabilities.

Guatemala National Disability Study ENDIS 2016 Report

DONICIO Carlos
GRECH Shaun
Islay MACTAGGART
Jonathan NABER
Dr Ana Rafaela SALAZAR DE BARRIOS
Gonna ROTA,
Sarah POLLACK
April 2017

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The Guatemala National Disability Study (ENDIS 2016) was undertaken to address a need for up to date reliable data on disability in Guatemala.

Through a population based survey:

* To estimate the national disability prevalence among adults and children in Guatemala, and to provide regional estimates for 5 broad regions

* To disaggregate the prevalence of disability in Guatemala by age, sex, type of functional limitation and socio-economic status

* To explore the impact of disability on: poverty, quality of life, participation, health and opportunities to go to school and to work amongst children and adults respectively

Through a qualitative study:

* To explore cultural, ideological, and social interpretations and responses to disability; provide insight into the disability and poverty relationship; and examine social, political, and economic dimensions operating within this relationship.

Assessing fiscal policies from a human rights perspective

Center for Economic and Social Rights
July 2016

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"The study undertaken by the Center for Economic and Social Rights (CESR) and the Instituto Centroamericano de Estudios Fiscales (ICEFI) aimed to contribute to a broader reflection on the role of fiscal policy in complying with a state’s economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) obligations. Despite being a middle-income country with the largest economy in Central America, Guatemala’s social indicators were alarming; with more than half the population living below the national poverty line and one in seven Guatemalans living in extreme poverty. The persistence of systemic inequality and discrimination could be partially explained by the legacy of almost 40 years of armed conflict, which did not end until the signing of the Peace Accords in 1996. Nevertheless, the stark contrasts between rich and poor suggested that the dismal state of ESC rights could not be attributed to limited state resources, but to the way in which they were distributed, this highlighted the need to hold the state accountable for its efforts to generate and manage resources equitably and in accordance with its human rights obligations.... Methodological case study on the use of available resources to realize economic, social and cultural rights in Guatemala

Who is being left behind in sub-Saharan Africa, Asia and Latin America? 3 reports from ODI

LYNCH, Alainna
BERLINER, Tom
MAROTTI, Chiara
BHAKTAL Tanvi
RODRIGUEZ TAKEUCHI Laura
et al
February 2016

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The commitment to ‘leave no one behind’ has been a key feature of all the discussions on the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Here are three papers setting out the first step to implementing this agenda - the step of identifying marginalised communities. The focus is on two case study countries for each of the three regions, sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the papers identify gaps in achieving a number of outcomes relating to key SDGs targets for marginalised groups. The paper on Asia highlights people with disabilities in Bangladesh.

Applied research concerning inclusion of persons with disabilities in systems of social protection - social protection policy analysis, Peru

VASQUEZ, Alberto
GOTELLI, Veronica
BLANCHET, Karl
WALSHAM, Matthew
May 2015

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The effect of mainstream social protection policies in Peru on the inclusion of persons with disabilities in Peruvian society are explored in the both economic and social context.  The policy analysis was conducted to understand past successes and failures and to plan for future policy implementation and the research took place alongside a similar analysis in Tanzania.  A policy research guideline was developed allowing cross-country comparison between the two studies. A literature review was carried out to identify social protection policies and programmes in Peru. In addition, 22 interviews were held with key stakeholders, including organisations of persons with disabilities, to explore more in-depth information on the impact of major policies. Social protection policies, health, education and employment issues for people with disabilities are covered. Associated qualitative and quantitative reports are available.

Using Postcolonial Perspectives to Consider Rehabilitation with Children with Disabilities: The Bamenda-Toronto Dialogue

NIXON, Stephanie A
COCKBURN, Lynn
ACHEINEGEH, Ruth
BRADLEY, Kim
CAMERON, Debra
MUE, Peter N
SAMUEL, Nyingcho
GIBSON, Barbara E
2015

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This article discusses tensions in children’s rehabilitation that came to light through a series of ‘postcolonial dialogues’ amongst Canadian and Cameroonian participants. We defined ‘tensions’ as conflicts, contrasting ways of seeing things, and/or taken-forgranted ideas that shape issues related to rehabilitation for children with disabilities. These tensions were identified, articulated, and deconstructed through an iterative, multi-phase dialogue among eight individuals who identify as people with disabilities, rehabilitation providers, and/or rehabilitation researchers in Cameroon and Canada. The tensions discussed in this article problematize conceptualizations of disability and of client-centred care, the role of pain as a reinforcement tool in rehabilitation, and assumptions about poverty and religion in the context of rehabilitation practice. We present this synthesis to achieve several aims: (1) to provide multiple ways for rehabilitation providers and others to better understand these particular substantive issues; (2) to model the use of a critical lens as an approach for thinking about rehabilitation that promotes reflective and deliberate practice and that can be applied across contexts; and, (3) to promote dialogue about postcolonial and other critical perspectives on rehabilitation with children and with other groups.

 

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

Revolutionary entanglements: Transversal mappings of disability in the favela

NASCIMENTO, Ashley Do
SKOTT-MYHRE, Hans A
SKOTT-MYHRE, Kathleen S G
2015

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This paper examines, complicates and contests the implicit discourse of children living in poverty as inherently disabled. Challenging the media portrayal of young people living in the favelas in Rio de Janeiro within the neo-liberal discourse of development, the article will draw on the experience of one of the author’s (Ashley Do Nascimento) experience as a child and youth care worker and ethnographer in a favela in Rio. An argument will be made for re-thinking dis-ability in relation to poverty and childhood in the global south.

 

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

Disability, poverty and education: perceived barriers and (dis)connections in rural Guatemala

GRECH, Shaun
2014

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This paper engages with the impacts of disability on the formal education of disabled people in poor rural areas. Reporting on qualitative ethnographic work in Guatemala, adults with a physical impairment provided retrospective accounts of their educational trajectories. Findings highlight multidimensional and dynamic barriers to education confronted by all poor people, but which often intensified for disabled people. These met a host of disability-specific barriers cutting across social, physical, economic, political and personal spheres. Findings report how in the face of more persistent basic needs and costs, education had a high opportunity cost, and often could not be sustained. Disabled parents also came to prioritise the education of their children translating into limited or no school re-entry for these parents. The paper concludes that engagement with temporal and context specific (but fluid) spaces of poverty is necessary, because it is within these spaces that disability and education are constructed and lived, and within and through which barriers emerge. Cross-sectoral efforts are needed, addressing educational barriers for all poor people indiscriminately, while targeting families to remove obstacles to other basic needs competing with education. Critically, efforts are needed to ensure that educational outcomes are linked to immediate contributions to the family economy and welfare through work.

 

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2014, Vol. 1 No. 1

Neurasthenia Revisited: Psychologising precarious labor and migrant status in contemporary discourses of Asian American nervousness

TAM, Louise
2014

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Neurasthenia—a term first coined by American neurologist George M. Beard in the 1860s—was a ‘malady of civilization’ associated with cerebral overpressure from the stresses of modern industrial life (Rabinbach, 1992:154). Many scholars of neurasthenia assume this psychopathological ‘disease of the will’ was a white disease that disappeared from Western medical practice since the early twentieth century. However, in this paper, I argue that not only has neurasthenia traveled to non-Western contexts, but that its genealogy as a culture-bound syndrome continues to haunt the present in North American cross-cultural counselling. Through a textual analysis of multicultural psychology textbooks published over the last decade, I argue these ‘traits’ serve to sequester problems of oppression into the private, apolitical space of family and culture, renarrativizing experiences of racial profiling, classroom segregation, worker disablement, and poverty as culturally determined mental health problems.

 

Disability and the Global South, 2014, Vol. 1 No. 2

Bridging aging and developmental disabilities service networks : challenges and best practices

FACTOR, Alan
HELLER, Tamar
JANICKI, Matthew
March 2012

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This reports aims to provide the "best practices guide to encourage the ‘bridging’ of the aging and developmental disabilities service networks that are both in need of including managed long-term, integrated care for people who are dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, and rebalancing initiatives that promote community living"

Giving with one hand...evaluation of post-earthquake physical rehabilitation response in Haiti, 2010 : a systems analysis

TATARYN, Myroslava
BLANCHET, Karl
2012

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This report presents the evaluation of the post-emergency rehabilitation response in Haiti in order to assess what had been achieved, to learn from good and not-so-good practice, and to promote the development of an effective rehabilitation sector in the future.This evaluation provides evidence, to inform humanitarian organisations, about what must be done in a post-disaster situation so that people with disabilities have access to relief and protection on an equal basis with others, and what is required in the long-term to develop a good rehabilitation service

Effective poverty reduction and empowering women : a win-win situation?|CCTs in Latin America

HERZOG, Karolin
October 2011

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"Building on the conceptual issues surrounding the discussion of the feminisation of anti-poverty programmes and its translation into CCTs (Conditional cash transfer programmes), this paper therefore calls for more deliberately gender-sensitive programme designs to address women's capabilities for income generation and for the inclusion of men in order to transform gender relations and create more equality"
Discussion papers on social protection, Issue No 12

The feasibility of a universal pension in Belize

KNOX-VYDMANOV, Charles
June 2011

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"This study assesses the feasibility of putting in place a universal pension in Belize. The report is structured into five sections. Section one looks at the situation of older people in Belize today in terms of demographics, health, work and poverty. Section two considers the adequacy of the existing social security system, assessing coverage and, in particular, the effectiveness of the NCP in reaching the poorest older people. Following on from this analysis, section three outlines the rationale for a universal pension in Belize, both in terms of the pension system, and the impacts it would have on reducing the poverty of older people, their families and Belizean society as a whole. Section four then assesses the affordability of a universal pension, and section five considers key issues to take into account in implementation"

Disability and poverty in developing countries : a snapshot from the World Health Survey

MITRA, Sophie
POSARAC, Aleksandra
VICK, Brandon
April 2011

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This paper outlines the economic and poverty situation of working-age persons with disabilities and their households in 15 developing countries. Using data from the World Health Survey, the study presents estimates of disability prevalence, individual-level economic well-being, household-level economic well-being, and multidimensional poverty measure. Detailed appendices are provided to support the results of the study. This paper is useful for people interested in the social and economic conditions of people with disabilities in developing countries
Social Protection Discussion Paper No 1109

Family-based HIV prevention and intervention services for youth living in poverty-affected contexts : the CHAMP model of collaborative, evidence-informed programme development

BHANA, Arvin
et al
June 2010

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The Collaborative HIV Prevention and Adolescent Mental Health Program (CHAMP) is a family-focused, evidence-based intervention that has been tested in low-income contexts in the US, Caribbean and South Africa. This paper gives a description of the theoretical and empirical bases of the development and implementation of CHAMP in the US and South Africa

Immunization rates among disabled children in Ecuador: Unanticipated findings

GROCE, Nora
AYORA, Paolo
KAPLAN, Lawrence
August 2007

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Researchers hypothesize that impoverished parents in developing countries may forego provision of healthcare for disabled children, instead allocating scarce resources to nondisabled children or other household needs. We compared the immunization rates of 32 children with complex special heathcare needs with those of 95 nondisabled siblings in coastal Ecuador. Almost 100% (31 of 32) of the disabled children studied were immunized at a rate comparable with their nondisabled siblings. We propose that this finding is attributable to an effective national immunization program and to positive local sociocultural attitudes toward disability. These findings underscore the need for more research on disability across cultures.

Social analysis and disability : a guidance note : incorporating disability-inclusive development into Bank-supported projects

World Bank
Ed
March 2007

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The Social Development department of the World Bank has produced this easy-to-use report as a part of a series of guidance notes on social analysis. It offers practical advice on mainstreaming disability-inclusive development into World Bank projects. The report provides a checklist for developing inclusive disability policies and for including people with disabilities in each aspect of the development project cycle. The report does not aim to promote separate disability projects but rather to ensure that people with disabilities are included in all projects. The report would be useful for anyone with an interest in mainstreaming disability in international development policy and practice

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