An assesment of the management challenges facing skill development for children with celebral palsy in Mombasa County - Kenya.

Abstract

This study sought to assess the management challenges facing skill development for children with Cerebral Palsy and identifies strategies that can be used to improve the skill development. Children with cerebral palsy are not really different from other non-disabled children in intellectual and knowledge of learning, only that they have a problem with their physical growth and brain development disorders which makes them slow in acquiring there developmental skills. The main challenges identified include; lack of appropriate instructional materials, lack of total quality management in cerebral palsy schools, lack of cooperation between teachers and parents, lack of experienced personnel and lack of appropriate curriculum. Specifically the study sought to assess the factors that influence skill development for children with cerebral palsy, to determine if availability of specially trained personnel affects the Managements’ skill development for children with cerebral palsy, to find out how the right to education enhances effective skill development in the cerebral palsy children, to identify strategies that can be used to improve skill development for cerebral palsy children. Literature was classified into two types of studies: the issues arising from the factors influencing skill development for children with cerebral palsy on one side and how they affect skill development on other side illustrated by a conceptual frame work. The two sets of variables included independent variable with instructional materials, trained professionals, special child rights, time allocation and skill development for the cerebral palsied children as the dependent variable. The study was a descriptive research and data for the survey was collected using questionnaires. From a population of 5 public primary special schools and 10 private primary special schools in Mombasa the study was obtained using a sample of 10% of the special schools of which ten respondents were interviewed from each school. The desired sample was obtained using proportional sampling from which the study subjects were randomly selected. After the development of the draft data collection draft, a pilot study was conducted in Tudor special private school in Mombasa District. The data was collected, coded and analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Scientists (SPSS). The research findings were presented using tables and figures while discussions and recommendations drawn from the findings were given, for instance, increasing community participation in skill development for learners with cerebral palsy, allocation of enough time in preparation and instilling of the developmental skills, increasing human and instructional capacity in the area of special needs particularly in support of cerebral palsied children with a flexible curriculum and appropriate instructional materials so as the learners with cerebral palsy can acquire their developmental skills adequately.