Empower young people with disabilities

Casual Day is a project that raises funds for services for people with disabilities.

“The project is also involved in influencing the government’s policy and legislation framework around disability, through its parent organisation, the National Council for Persons with Physical Disabilities in South Africa (NCPPDSA),” said Andrea Vinassa, media liaison for Casual Day.

“The funding that we generate through the Casual Day project is utilised in many ways that are not always evident,” said the NCPPDSA director, Therina Wentzel.

“Of course, it is important to provide services to people with disabilities on a daily basis, and this is done through our 12 national beneficiary organisations.

“But it is also very important that we steer policy and legislation.

“As we celebrate Youth Month, we are mindful of the fact that children with disabilities suffer more abuse and neglect than other children in general.

“Our work takes us to communities where children live in really dire conditions, without any resources or recourse to the law.

“We have recently made recommendations on the programmatic inclusion of children with disabilities in government’s roll-out of the Isibindi community-based child protection programme.”

The NCPPDSA aims to ensure that children with disabilities are fully accommodated and provided for in general child protection programmes.

“The Isibindi model of care is a community-based programme that trains unemployed community members in accredited, integrated child and youth care services for child-headed households and vulnerable families,” explained Wentzel.

“NCPPDSA’s recommendations on the inclusion of children with disabilities into the Isibindi programme emphasises that the programme should make adequate provision for the identification, protection and advancement of the rights of children with disabilities,” said Andre Kalis, NCPPDSA’s officer heading up the division dealing with children and policies.

“Isibindi offers an ideal opportunity for holistically addressing the needs and challenges of children with disabilities, who find themselves in a seriously disadvantaged position. Such opportunity as we now have with the upscaling of Isibindi should be grasped.”

These are some of the recommendations made by NCPPDSA to Isibindi:

• Ensure that all children with disabilities are identified and reached out to. This considering the fact that, due to stigmatisation, children with disabilities are often hidden and sometimes literally locked away in back rooms.
• Systematically address stigmatisation, discrimination and stereotyping present in communities towards children with disabilities through community work processes.
• Work towards the deliberate social, recreational, cultural and educational inclusion of children with disabilities, thereby addressing the gross exclusion and alienation so prevalent in their lives.
• Address the rights of children with disabilities to basic education and to Early Childhood Development (ECD) on an equal basis with their able-bodied peers.
• Work towards the provision of assistive devices according to the disability-specific needs of individual children.

“NCPPDSA’s lobbying role is fundamental to maintaining a national network of disability organisations that work together under the umbrella of the South African Disability Alliance (SADA),” said Wentzel.

“The majority of Casual Day’s 12 national beneficiaries are also members of SADA, creating yet another opportunity for the disability sector to collaborate and speak with one voice.”

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