Ho, July 26, GNA- Smiles for Speech (SFS), a not-for-profit organisation, in collaboration with Kekeli Foundation, has provided a day’s training for mothers of children with developmental disabilities in Ho.
The training aimed to build the capacity and confidence of the mothers in caring for their children and to equip them with the requisite knowledge and skills on how best to feed them.
Madam Sandy Dorsey, the Founder of SFS, and a speech-language pathologist said children with cerebral palsy and neurological disorders could have difficulties in swallowing and feeding.
She said the training was important to help the mothers to take care of the children to get proper feeding and not become malnourished.
She said children with these problems required special and proper attention, however, some mothers did not know how to create a “great and rich language environment” for them and support them with therapeutic speech services.
The speech-language pathologist said the organisation was working to bridge the gap in areas where there were few language therapists by collaborating with other organisations doing similar programmes.
Madam Dorsey underscored the need for a wider scale-up of interventions to support persons with disabilities to deal with stigma and discrimination against them and to create the needed environment that would help them explore their potential.
The speech-language pathologist said though some mothers were doing their best to support their children, stigma and discrimination from society were another challenge they had to deal with, and this was a worrying situation.
She urged society to ensure that persons with disabilities were treated equally with love and dignity, saying, everyone had a story to tell, hence her outfit would continue to support these children to tell their stories either through signs or gestures.
Madam Carrie Colleen Brown, Director of Kekeli Foundation, asked parents to seek early intervention when they realised their child was having challenges with speech and feeding.
She said early intervention was key to identifying the challenge and finding solutions to address it, adding that the Foundation was ever ready to provide the necessary support to parents.
The Director said the Foundation would continue to collaborate with relevant organisations to provide the needed services to children with developmental disabilities to ensure that they were not left behind.
“Society has to be more supportive of families of children with disabilities,” she said, urging all to come together to deal with the stigma against persons with disabilities as everybody was important in society and that disability was just adversity.
Some participants who spoke to Ghana News Agency were grateful to SFS and Kekeli Foundation for the training, saying the knowledge and skills acquired would help them in taking care of their children.
Madam Comfort Nuwordu, one of the beneficiaries, disclosed to GNA that her child could not walk but due to physiotherapy services they continued to receive from the Foundation, the child has now started walking.
GNA