Seminar: Disability in South Africa: from research to practice and policy, and back again
Ukubeleka (to carry a child on the back): often the only way a child
who cannot walk can attend health services.
Disability scholars, practitioners and activists are invited to join for a session of discussion and reflection on disability practice in Africa and other developing-world contexts.
After five years as an occupational therapist in both state and non-governmental health services in the rural Eastern Cape (South Africa), Kate Sherry realised that she knew far too little about the people she worked with and their context, to be really effective in her work. A PhD offered the opportunity to get to know things from “the other side”, and she focused her project on the question: “How do rural people with disabilities and primary health-care workers co-construct access to health care?” Through detailed case studies of eleven people with disabilities from a single rural village, which included the perspectives of health-care workers, family members and key informants, she has been able to deepen and reframe her understanding of what happens in the interactions between people with disabilities and health-care workers, as well as what happens outside of these to inform them. What this process has taught her is transforming the way she practices as an OT in this setting, and how she thinks about rehabilitation and other services in the broader context.
In this seminar, Sherry will present extracts from the research, and the insights she has found most influential for her own practice, across rehabilitation, advocacy and professional development. She will also outline the implications for future work, in both hands-on rehab and service conceptualisation.
This will be followed by discussion on approaches to disability work in Africa and elsewhere, drawing on participants’ own experiences and thinking about issues of development, empowerment, effectiveness and sustainability.
To coincide with this seminar, the ASC Library has created a new web dossier on disability in Africa.
Speaker
Kate Sherry, visiting PhD student from the University of Cape Town, occupational therapist and chair of Rural Rehab SA (RuReSA).
Kate Sherry is a South African occupational therapist working in the field of primary health care for rural communities in South Africa. She has worked as a clinician and manager of both state and non-governmental services at Zithulele, Eastern Cape (SA), and as a volunteer and consultant clinician in other rural areas in South Africa, as well as in Madagascar. She chairs Rural Rehabilitation South Africa (RuReSA), an organisation supporting and representing rural therapists, with a strong advocacy and policy advisory role with the National Department of Health. She is busy with a PhD in Public Health at the University of Cape Town, researching the interactions between people with disabilities from a rural village, and primary health care workers (also in the Eastern Cape). She is currently a visiting scholar at the ASC, Leiden.
Date, time and location
16 December 2014
14.00- 16.00
Pieter de la Courtgebouw / Faculty of Social Sciences, Wassenaarseweg 52, 2333 AK Leiden
Room 1A01 (first floor)
Registration
Posted on 8 December 2014, last modified on 10 December 2014