Sierra Leone
The Sierra Leone Inclusion Project
Our work in Sierra Leone began with a visit to the capital – Freetown, a city of close to a million people. In this area, it is estimated that there are over 50,000 disabled young people. While recognising the capital city’s extensive poverty and the desperate circumstances disabled people face, we realised the acute need for projects in the more isolated parts of the country. This includes Makeni, which is Sierra Leone’s fifth largest city.
In Makeni – like everywhere in Sierra Leone - medical, social, and therapeutic services are virtually non-existent. To meet the needs of disabled children and young people in Makeni, we partnered with Mary Penn-Timity and Alice Browne – Founding Directors of the Sierra Leone Autistic Society. Mary and Alice are Sierra Leonean and are both qualified social workers with extensive experience in the UK and USA and are champions of disabled children. Mary is a mother to a child with autism.
As part of their work in Makeni, Mary and Alice encountered desperate families of disabled children without access to any support in keeping their children safe, happy, and healthy. Recognising these families’ acute need for help, it was clearly necessary to initiate a project in Makeni in addition to the Freetown Inclusion Project, in order to provide parents of disabled children with a viable ‘life-supporting’ alternative. The SLIP launched in April 2019, and is already improving the lives of many disabled children and their families.
Sierra Leone Inclusion Project in action…
Playschemes
Our play teams in Makeni have registered 120 disabled children offer the opportunity for interaction and play with others which is vital to development. The playscheme is a hub for the delivery of other community-based medical, education and social services. Our plan is to expand the project to Freetown as soon as teams have the resources. Right now disabled children are playing at our Makeni playscheme every day every week. Children have a meal every time they come to playscheme.
Medical Support
Disabled children are often at the back of the queue when it comes to receiving medical attention - our Medical Support Programme seeks to change this. Imagine living with a broken leg for four years. Due to the lack of affordable, quality health care in Sierra Leone, this is a daily reality for many children. To mitigate this, our Playschemes allow for informal assessment of children’s healthcare needs within a child friendly accessible community setting. We provide the setting for outreach medical services for example Dr Rogers – our trusted GP - will visit every month to provide treatment or refer the child to appropriate services. This level of support in extremely rare.
The playscheme provides natural opportunities for the team to provide Health Education Programmes such as hygiene talks for young women – once again in a caring non-institutional setting.
Parent Support and Community Awareness
Parent support groups can be a lifeline to carers of disabled children - they are an important place for parents to give and receive support, share experiences and learn about children’s impairments. We hold a Parent Support Group in Makeni twice a month, where a trained counsellor is in attendance to provide therapy and psycho-social support. This element of our provision aims to raise community awareness of disability, thereby moving towards a more inclusive community, and away from negative traditional attitudes and practices. We aim to expand and increase this key service as the year progresses.
Inclusive Education
No more than a handful of disabled children in Makeni or Freetown currently attend any of the local schools. The play team’s work improves the almost non-existent participation of disabled children in education, by ending their isolation and assessing their educational needs and capabilities. Currently, mainstream schools are severely ill-equipped and under-skilled to include disabled children but we are well placed to develop good practice alongside our project partner – Sierra Leone Autistic Society – who run a specialist school in Freetown whose work is recognised by the government. We all agree that a model that delivers a range of formal and informal education using a blend of play and classroom will be a practical and effective way to support the development of disabled children.
As we grow, we will work with local schools to establish ‘Inclusion Clubs’ (groups of non-disabled children in schools who advocate for their disabled peers) and project volunteers who will act as classroom assistants to support disabled children in school, as appropriate. For many children, the supportive, stimulating and immersive environment provided by the Playscheme will be the most appropriate educational experience.
