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The 3rd Asia-Pacific CBR Congress

Assessing Barriers to agricultural skills training services for persons with disabilities in Sepone District, Savannakhet Province, Lao PDR

3rd Asia Pacific CBR Congress
Concurrent Session 4 - SHGs and DPOs in the Community
Handicap International Laos

Introduction

Having an evidence base is essential for developing local advocacy focused on improving access to services. In Lao PDR, self help groups and/or DPOs require support to facilitate data collection regarding the situation of their members. Key issues of importance to both DPOs and service providers include: Persons with disabilities’ access to information about existing services, Gaps in service availability, Barriers to accessing existing services, Facilitators or “good practices” supporting increased accessibility of existing services.

In 2014-2015, Handicap International and the Lao Disabled People’s Association (LDPA) piloted an initiative to support provincial DPOs to collect information about the situation of their members in rural villages of Savannakhet Province. Barrier Assessment workshops were implemented to achieve four key objectives: (1) to increase community members’ understanding of existing services, (2) to identify priority needs in the community that are not being met by existing services, (3) to identify barriers for community members to access existing services, (4) to identify facilitators, or good practices, for improving services for community members.

Criteria for Assessing to Local Livelihoods Training Services – The Six A’s

Based on the criteria defined by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, the 6A’s provides an expanded framework from which to think about criteria or elements that must be present for people to exercise their rights to services. The 6 key criteria (the 6A’s) can be used to identify barriers and facilitators to inclusive service delivery at the implementation level.

  • Availability: A good practice in relation to availability will have the impact of making a specific service more available for persons with disabilities. An example could include the expansion of the number of inclusive schools for children with disabilities.
  • Accessibility: A good practice in relation to accessibility will have the impact of making a specific service more accessible for persons with disabilities. An example could be the adaptation of a building to be more accessible for persons with physical impairments.
  • Affordability: A good practice in relation to affordability will have the impact of making a specific service available at a lower cost to either the user or the service provider.
  • Adaptability: A good practice in relation to adaptability will have the impact of making a specific service accessible for a number of persons with disabilities, including persons with different types of impairments.
  • Acceptability: A good practice in relation to acceptability will have the impact of making persons with disability more satisfied with the experience of using an existing service.
  • Accountability: A good practice in relation to accountability will include any action to allow participation of persons with disabilities in the design, monitoring and/or evaluation of services.

Approach and Methodology of the Barrier Assessment

A Multi-Stakeholder Approach

At community level, multiple stakeholders are involved in the process of developing services that are accessible to persons with disabilities. The access to services triangle provides a framework for understanding the roles of key stakeholders in the development of accessible services. The barrier assessment process provides an opportunity to capture information about what services are important for people with disabilities, the barriers that prevent people with disabilities from using existing services, and facilitators to enable people with disabilities to access local services.

 Figure 1(Figure text)

A Focus Group Discussion Methodology

The barrier assessment uses a focus group discussion methodology including participatory data collection activities to facilitate participant discussion and feedback. Barrier assessments were conducted with two target groups: (1) persons with disabilities and their family members and (2) village and district level service providers.

Barrier assessment focus group discussions with persons with disabilities and their family members included an initial activity to identify existing services at the village and district level and rank their importance. Following the initial ranking of services, the two services with the highest priority ranking were assessed further using the barrier assessment questionnaire, which follows the 6A framework for assessing service delivery. For each of the 6A criteria, 5 statements were defined to facilitate group discussion and feedback. For each statement, participants were asked to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement using a scale of 1-5 (1- Strongly disagree, 2- Disagree, 3- Unsure, 4- Agree, 5- Strongly agree).

Barrier assessment focus group discussions with service providers were limited to collection of data using the barrier assessment questionnaire.

Key Findings

Many people with disabilities identified that the livelihoods training services they need are not available in their villages. Although there were existing services at the district level, many people with disabilities were not aware of the existence of the service. Of those aware of the service, many were not aware of the specific trainings available, the location of the training center, the cost of trainings, etc.

Service providers confirmed that the majority of services are based in facilities at the district level. They do not have budget to carry outreach training at village level.

  • 90% of people with disabilities in the focus groups said that the information about the services are provided in written form and that they are unable to access the information provided. “We don’t know where to use the services, and what they can provide, we never use it before.”
  • 80% of service providers say that they do not know how to make the information and communication accessible for persons with disabilities yet. “The information and communication materials about the services are only provided in one way for everyone. We don’t know how to make it so that it can be used by people with different types of disabilities yet”.
  • 100% of service providers in the focus groups said they will only carry outreach services at village level when project funding is available. “We will be happy to provide services to persons with disabilities if projects are targeting people with disabilities and if they can make use of our service in the way we provide it. Otherwise, their families have to support them”.

The majority of people with disabilities in the focus groups said they only learn how to raise animals or develop their agricultural skills through traditional peer to peer training.

Impact of the Barrier Assessment

The barrier assessment highlighted two important barriers that are often overlooked within development projects. Firstly, access to information about available services is an essential prerequisite for enabling persons with disabilities to access services at community level. Secondly, services delivered at District Level remain inaccessible for the majority of persons with disabilities due to lack of accessible transport in rural communities or lack of motivation to invest time and financial resources required to travel to district service centers.

As a result of the barrier assessment activity, Handicap International is working closely with local services to support provision of accessible information at village level about services available in the District center. In addition, Handicap International is supporting increased focus on peer to peer learning in the community rather than institution based training at district center. Lastly, Handicap International will support the implementation of a series of model outreach camps to demonstrate how mobile training camps can increase accessibility of agriculture skills training for persons with disabilities in rural villages.

Example questionnaire for persons with disabilities and their families

 Figure 2(Figure text)


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