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This report documents how thousands of children in Armenia live in orphanages, residential special schools for children with disabilities, and other institutions. The report is based on Human Rights Watch visits to five state-run orphanages and ten state-run schools, including six special schools and four mainstream schools, and interviews with 173 people, in eight cities in Armenia. They interviewed 47 children and young adults, and 63 families of children living in orphanages, attending special schools or attending mainstream schools. They also interviewed directors of orphanages, special schools, and mainstream schools, as well as social workers, doctors, teachers, psychologists, caregivers, and other staff in institutions

Topics include: overview of residential institutions in Armenia; institutionalization of children and young adults and discrimination in the deinstitutionalization process; problems for children and young adults in residential institutions; lives transformed; national and international legal obligations; failure to guarantee quality education to children with disabilities; other forms of education for children with disabilities; government and donors’ response; recommendations

This study presents a situation analysis on daily functioning, caregiving, and inclusion of children with spina bifida in Uganda. 139 children with spina bifida and their families from 4 regions in Uganda participated in this study. Findings show how a complex play of cultural values, globalisation and access to biomedical care determines knowledge, and negative attitudes about, and perception of children with spina bifida

Afrika Focus, vol 30, no. 1, 2017,  pp. 130-136

DOI https://doi.org/10.21825/af.v30i1.4984

"This report maps the situation of persons with SBH in relation to healthcare access and is a follow up of the CRPD Concluding Observations Art.25. Through a comprehensive survey, IF collected valuable data on the experiences, satisfaction, and perceptions of healthcare coverage of individuals with SBH across Europe. Based on its findings, the financial coverage of treatment and assistive products for patients with SBH is grossly insufficient across the EU. Europe as a whole lacks multidisciplinary care and specialised SBH teams, which translates into long waiting times and insufficient knowledge of the SBH specificities. 

Considering these findings, IF urges the EU Member States to adequately support the healthcare needs of persons with SBH, and to invest more substantially into creating multidisciplinary clinics that can help avoid preventable complications 11 and may reduce the overall burden 12 on the patient and the system. In addition, the Member States should actively support creation of the European Reference Networks as a way of improving care for persons with SBH. IF also calls on the European institutions for support in training medical professionals on rights of persons with disabilities."

Special issue: Improving access to healthcare. The aim of this special issue is to stimulate discussion and new research on the health and health care of people with autism spectrum disorder. In a co-productive approach, we give people on the autism spectrum, their families and health care providers a voice to open an exchange between professionals and people with lived experience. The guest editorial is freely accessible. There are six papers:

• Autism and healthcare
• Quality of health and health services in people with fragile X syndrome: perspective of their parents
• Transition tools and access to adult primary care
• Systemic-attachment formulation for families of children with autism
• An online ASD learning module for pediatric health care professionals
• Pain in Rett syndrome: peculiarities in pain processing and expression, liability to pain causing disorders and diseases, and specific aspects of pain assessment

This publication intends to draw lessons learned from the set-up of a Social Work (SW) unit in the PRC in Kampong Cham province of Cambodia using the Personalized Social Support (PSS) process and provide an example of person-centered approach in rehabilitation service delivery, to be considered by PWDF and other rehabilitation I/NGOs and promoted within other PRCs in Cambodia. The specific objectives of this publication are: 

• To identify recruitment strategies and clinical activities conducted by the SW unit 
• To consider the capacity development of SW staff along the development of a SW unit
• To outline how SW and PSS are linked to the Cambodian Ministry of Social Affairs Veterans and Youth Rehabilitation Guidelines on Physical Rehabilitation in Cambodia4 (also known as the Standard Working Procedures -SWP) with reference to its application.
• To consider how SW interventions and PSS contributes to service users’ social participation and rights.

Capturing best practices through a ‘’lessons learnt’’ process can be utilized to advocate for the adoption and replication of such a model within wider rehabilitation services in Cambodia.

This publication was developed by a mixed methods approach on the basis of various sources and tools, including:

• Desk review including collection of documents and tools used by the SW unit, and field visit reports
• Workshops/meetings with the PRC Manager, PRC Unit heads and Focal Clients (FC) to gain reflections on the process and map a reverse pathway of change
• Key Informant interviews: Interviews with members of the project team and local authorities.
• Case study frames were designed and used as well as some questions from SCOPEO5 Quality of life linked to social and personal relationships during the interview. 
• Interviews with 15 beneficiaries (SW Clients at the PRC) to assess the impact of SW input over a 13 month period from June 2015 to July 2016

Purpose:   The International Classification of Functioning (ICF) has found widespread acceptance since it was launched in 2001. Yet, little is known about its use in Primary Care. This paper aims to contribute to the dialogue about the practical use of the ICF by exploring how this framework constitutes a supplementary source to inform disability-related decision making in integrated Primary Care.

Method: The implementation process of the ICF in a Latin American Primary Care and Community-Based Rehabilitation setting is described and the ICF diagram is applied to a life story as an example of its current use. Participant observation, in-depth study of reports of team meetings and the review of clinical files are the main data collection methods. Data analysis is enabled by the combination of single-case study with theory testing, which facilitates the generation of hypotheses in this exploratory study.

Results: A valuable time component of the ICF may support continuity in Primary Care and the universal application of the ICF framework can promote comprehensiveness by integrating individual rehabilitation and collective disability prevention. A way to mitigate the perceived dominance of biomedical disease and deficiency thinking is proposed in order to encourage the biopsychosocial focus of Primary Care. Finally, the implementation of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) in the health condition domain of the ICF highlights the importance of social responsibility towards disability.

Conclusion: This study suggests that a creative implementation of the ICF during life course to everyone who uses universally accessible healthcare may strengthen the integrative functions of Primary Care, and may be at the heart of the information system of this essential part of the healthcare system. Further research on the complementary use of ICF and ICD-10 is suggested in order to support community-based multisectoral intervention which may be coordinated by Primary Care.

This book offers concrete ideas and examples to those interested in driving a radically different approach to supporting people with dementia and their families. "We have explored a number of approaches with people who have been leading their development. We have been keen to look at both approaches that emerge from working directly to improve support for people with dementia and others that have different roots, but we think are potentially very transferable. None of the approaches is yet being used at any significant scale". Discussions and examples are all UK based. There is an introduction detailing current problems and issues with care and support for people with dementia. 10 approaches are described for housing and support, 4 concerned with enabling people to have good days and 7 associated with enabling people to connect with their community. 

"Country case studies were conducted in Uganda and Malawi in order to document and analyse experiences and perspectives on childhood TB integration into other programmes at country level and related health system requirements. The aim was to inform the broader thinking about integration of childhood TB services. The Malawi case study identified and described different approaches to integration and unpacked the integration process. The perspective on TB integration of different relevant health actors at national and district level are described. The case study used a health systems approach and focused on the community and primary levels of the health system, paying attention to factors related to children of different ages in a lifecycle approach. The method for the case study included document review, consultations with key health actors at national and district level, a facility visit and a participatory workshop at national level. An analytical framework approach was used to investigate the extent of integration of childhood TB interventions in multiple dimensions. An assessment tool for the case studies was developed, summarising the assessment questions by theme, combining a number of existing tools and frameworks on health care integration in general and childhood TB and benchmarks for integrated community case management (iCCM)"

Purpose: The study aimed to (1) measure the Work Ability of employees with disability; (2) assess the factor structure of different potential models of Work Ability Index (WAI) for employees with disability; and (3) identify the best factor structure of Work Ability Index for employees with disability in the Malaysian cultural context.

Methods: Data was collected using the Work Ability Index (WAI) translated into Malay language. The study sample consisted of 275 employees with physical disability, from both public and private sectors across Malaysia. Descriptive statistics were calculated using IBM SPSS 20 to evaluate the score of each subscale and the cumulative index of Work Ability among employees with disability. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted using IBM SPSS AMOS 21 to assess the factor structure of WAI and evaluate the validity of the proposed models for employees with disability.

Results: The WAI scores were 29.5% poor, 35.3% moderate, 28.7% good and 6.5% excellent. In the validation process, a non-orthogonal two dimensional structure was identified. In this model of WAI, the subscales were attributed to two factors: (1) subjective Work Ability factor that consisted of subscales 1, 2 and 7; and (2) health-related Work Ability factor, comprised of subscales 3, 5, 4 and 6. These two factors were positively correlated, which indicates that employees with disability who exhibit positive subjective Work Ability tend to also report positive health- related Work Ability.

Conclusion: This study has provided the first Malay version of WAI and has paved the way for future studies on work ability among employees with disability. The WAI translation has been validated among employees with disability and has shown adequate psychometric properties, thus making it suitable to investigate the associations between aspects of work and their impact on the health of employees with disability.