Mugureikanga, Flora (2008) The Community Based Rehabilitation Approach: A Case Study of the St. John's Community Centre, Pumwani. Masters thesis, University of Nairobi.
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Abstract
The study focused on the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach as used by the St. John's Community Centre to address the needs of its recipients in the Pumwani administrative division. As the name suggests, the Community Based Rehabilitation. Approach involved the empowering of vulnerable children at the community level, while at the same time exploring all possibilities of empowering their families to carry out their responsibilities of bringing up children. The approach designed strategies that enhanced the capacity of communities: families and children cope with the conditions that contribute to the movement of the children from homes to the streets. It addressed the familial, situational, economic and psychosocial factors that predisposed the children to street life involvement. The broad objective of the research was to evaluate the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach used by The St John's Community Centre. The specific objectives were: to study and understand the content of the approach, to assess the implementation strategy of the approach, to establish challenges faced by the approach and record the measures against these challenges and lastly to collect and compile the stakeholders' perception in regard to the outcome of the community based rehabilitation program. The theories that informed this research were Herbert Blumer's symbolic interactionism theory and Adele Clarke's situational analysis theory. The research used the purposive sampling technique and a total of 50 respondents were interviewed. The main sources of data were secondary and primary. Secondary data was from: Books. Journals. Websites, Research reports and other projects running community based rehabilitation programs while the primary data was from direct observation. Interviews and the Focus Group Discussions. From the findings, a majority of the children (75%) stated that they were using their leisure time constructively since joining the empowerment programs run at the St. John's Community Centre. I rom the children interviewed. 60% stated that since they joined the empowerment programs they related and communicated better with the authority figures in their lives. At the children's clubs, the children interviewed said they had developed constructive attitudes towards life, based on moral and spiritual values. They had also become aware of their responsibilities towards their community/family and they had developed values. Since the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach targeted the entire community, the St. John's Centre had in place programs to empower the larger Pumwani community. These included: the HIV/AIDS program, advocacy program, and the economic program. Through the HIV/AIDS programme, psychological support for the people infected and affected by the pandemic was offered. Through services such as, home-based care, counseling, information dissemination and advocacy campaigns 11 HIV/AIDS village support groups had been created within the Pumwani location and a majority (78%) of the members in these support groups was attending the monthly support meetings. Through the economic empowerment programme, the St John's Community Centre aimed at reducing poverty among the Pumwani community members through the promotion of economic activities, capacity building and resource mobilisation. From the members of the program more than half 64% stated that they had been able to meet the medical needs of their children. The findings also indicated that a majority of the mothers in this program 79% had been able to meet the nutritional needs of their children while 86% of the mothers could meet the educational needs of their children. The findings established that there had been the development of functional community structures within the Pumwani location and that the community members had been able to acquire self-reliance by using the available resources and working together to improve the quality of their lives. Through the Community Based interventions the quality of lives of the poor and those living under deplorable situations had been improved which meant the community could cope better with the conditions that pushed children to migrate into the streets. Several challenges had been noted to affect the quality of the programs in place at the St. John's Community Centre. The challenges identified were both external and internal. However, these challenges faced by the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach were not termed as all negative since they provoked the St John's Com m unit} Centre to further thinking which inspired the development of several intervention strategies. The recommendations to organizations using the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach include: i) Organizations should aim at empowering entire families and communities to cope more effectively with their problems. Thus no handouts should be offered to communities since the handouts create the dependency syndrome; ii) For effective community entry and proper dissemination of information to the grassroots, organizations using the Community Based Rehabilitation Approach should work with the existing community structures and the community's opinion leaders; iii) For those organizations running Non Formal Education schools as part of their intervention strategies, the schools should run up to class eight in order to enable them to be considered as KCPE examination centres and be able to offer KCPE certificates to their pupils.
| Item Type: | Thesis (Masters) |
|---|---|
| Subjects: | H Social Sciences > HM Sociology |
| Divisions: | Africana |
| Depositing User: | Geoffrey Obatsa |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Jul 2016 07:56 |
| Last Modified: | 25 Jul 2016 08:34 |
| URI: | http://thesisbank.jhia.ac.ke/id/eprint/836 |
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