The extent of involvement of persons with disabilities in community development in the Amansie West District: a case study of PWDS of the Manso Atwere Zone
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Date
2015-04-28
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Abstract
Persons with disabilities (PWDs) despite being disproportionate users of support services in
health, social care and education settings, continue to face significant barriers and challenges to
participate in decision making and programmes in the community. The current study, therefore,
seeks to investigate the extent of PWDs participation in community development in the Amansie
West District. The study predominantly adopted a descriptive field survey to collect principally
primary data from PWDs, Chiefs and other opinion leaders in the Amansie West District. These
100 respondents were sampled through a multistage sampling procedure. The selection methods
involved both simple random and non-probabilistic purposive sampling. From the study, only a
limited number of PWDs are involved in development initiatives in the Manso Atwere zone of
the Amansie West District. The low level of involvement could probably be attributed to the
absence of mechanism for including PWDs in decision making. The level of PWDs participation
in the community development activities in the district is challenged by their low level of
education, health, unemployment and social exclusion. The predominant form of participation by
the PWDs in the communities is in the form of group. The nature of PWDs involvement in
community development is largely managerial participation. The male gender dominates in all
aspects of PWDs participation in community development in the studied district. The major
factors found to influence PWDs involvement in development activities in the district were
personal health or impairment, level of literacy or education, economic well-being or livelihood
and socio-cultural factors. On this basis, the current study recommends to community members
and stakeholders the need to increase PWDs participation in community development, provide
mechanism for PWDs inclusion in decision making, and gender equality in PWDs involvement.
Description
A thesis submitted to the Department of Community Health
College of Health Sciences
in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of MSc.
Disability and Rehabilitation Studies,