Browns School Versus Clermont Day-Care Centre

24/02/2014

Browns school is a special school for the disabled children from the junior year to main stream level; it was established to cater for the needs of disabled children throughout the EThekwini district and KZN as a whole. The school has about 365 children who are distributed according to the separate grades and according to the age range of the children. The school has about 5 qualified occupational therapists and has a well-established occupational therapy department within the school.

On the 24 February 2014 as the KwaDabeka community group we had gone to a visit to the institution to find out more about the programmes being run by the institution and ideas on how to set up an activity/ sensory wall for the Clermont community health centre (CHC). The programmes were to be used and implemented for the community day care centre within the Clermont clinic facilities.

One must reflect that the trip was successful as we were able to gather valuable information on the program implementation and also many ideas to that can be used to keep the occupational therapy department going for years. The occupational therapists were willing to share everything and were also keen to answer all our questions; they went on to give us a resource file copy which they use to plan their yearly programs. We were also exposed to all kinds of scrap material that is used by the department in making activities and toys for the children.

Even though there was a lot of positive one picked out from the trip, but it was very emotional for me as I compared the facilities they have at browns school and the difficulties faced by the ever stressed mothers at the Clermont day-care centre. The facility has about 6 mothers who have a mammoth task of caring for 35 children with different disabilities and of which most of them they hardly understand. They have no toys, no activities and no structured programmes for the children, hence making their tasks more difficult. 

As an occupational therapist, activist and an advocate for change I have concluded that there is still a long way to go in our country in order to make the lives of all the people living with disabilities better.