The National Council of Persons with Disabilities together with National Commission for Children and Hope and Homes for Children will be conducting a survey to generate fact based evidence in the area of Children with Disabilities and their families. The main objective is to inform advocacy and social mobilization to improve strategies, policies and programs both for Children with Disabilities in institutional care and Children with Disabilities living in their communities.
Mr Oswald Tuyizere, Director of Economic and Social Empowerment at National Council of Persons with Disabilities declared that the findings will have the potential to assess residential centres and to maintain an accurate picture of the life of Children with Disabilities and Centres. HABIMFURA Innocent, Country Director of Hope and Homes and Children in Rwanda said that the survey will focus on areas as follows: Counting the number of children in care broken down into key characteristics including gender, age range, parents’ living status, types of disabilities, reasons for placement, referral (who placed the child) of the placement child, place of origin, contact with families and significant others, age at institutionalization, length of stay within the institution, contact with family members, health status, education and attendance at school, attendance to specialized and or general health care, also Mapping out of the residential centres’ (a) facilities (location, history and stated purpose, physical infrastructure, equipment, occupancy/capacity, rate of new admissions and exits from the system); (b) provision of services within residential centres (health, education, psychosocial); (c) human resources (number of staff and other caregivers, structures/role, skills, experience and trainings); (d) good practices (data recording practices, outreach community program, exit strategy, care leaving support service) and (e) financial profile (budget, sources of funding, income and assets), registration status.