Part Three: Evaluation of Training Effects for Disabled Individual
At present time, there are many classification Standards on disability/disabled person in the world. Social and cultural factors affect the perceptions of disability or disabled person. General speaking, the common definition of disabled person is: A disabled person is the one who in his or her society is regarded or officially recognized as such, because of a difference in appearance and/or behaviour in combination with a functional limitation or an activity restriction. In the manual entitled "Training in the community for people with disabilities (TCPD), the disabled persons are defined based on "difficulties". for instance, people with difficulty seeing, difficulty hearing or speaking, difficulty moving, no feeling in the hands or feet, strange behaviour, fits and difficulty learning. In these evaluation guidelines of CBR, the above operational definition of disabled person will be used.
The evaluation of training effects for disabled individual can not only reflect the progress of the disabled persons after a period of rehabilitation training, but also the quality and quantity of implementation, management, resource unilization, technical application, in CBR programme. The rehabilitation effect of disabled person is influenced by many factors, such as the type and degree of disabilities, time and measure of training, etc. The functional assessment methods used in rehabilitation center (institution) are too sophisticated and specialized to be mastered by community staff. Therefore it should be considered to establish a kind of method which is simple, practical and easy to be used.
In these guidelines for evaluation of CBR, we try to take the "ability", i.e. daily living self-care ability, moving ability, work ability (learning ability) and social communication ability as the basis for the evaluation of training effect, in combination with the general income, employment, quality of life, schooling, education level, participation in social life and self-attitude of disabled person, in order to demonstrate what changes have happened since CBR programme has launched. (See tables 6.1-6.12)
Evaluating Community Based Rehabilitation :
Guidelines for Accountable Practice
By Dr. Tizun Zhao, Joseph K.F. Kwok Ph.D, J.P.