General News of Wednesday, 16 January 2019
Source: ghananewsagency.org
2019-01-16
Some analysts have described Ghana’s population growth as “alarming”
The Special Mothers Project, an advocacy and awareness creation programme on Cerebral Palsy issues has started an Inclusive Centre to provide recreational day care services to children aged five and below.
The Special Mothers Inclusive Centre (SMIC) will also serve as a respite for families with young children especially those with cerebral palsy to enable the families to work like any other family.
Mrs Hannah Awadzi, Founder and Executive Director of the Special Mothers Project, in a statement on Wednesday said: “The Inclusive Centre was born out of my own frustrations to provide a good upbringing and a decent life for my daughter with cerebral palsy”
“It has been very difficult getting her into mainstream school, I have approached a lot of schools and the only response I get is “No, we can’t, with the other option of an overly expensive facility, which we can’t afford”.
Mrs Awadzi, a mother of three toddlers, holds a first degree in psychology with linguistics from the University of Ghana, a Communications Professional, who also works as a journalists and have taken a lot of online courses on caring for vulnerable children as well as have practical hands on experience with children.
She said: “I have always run away from the responsibility of establishing a facility like this, I was bent on talking corporate Ghana and other organization into establishing such facilities but the response have not been encouraging.”
Mrs Awadzi said the critical growing years for children are the early ages between zero and six years, “and that is the period that the parents need all the peace of mind to decide what is good for their child, especially if the child has special needs, cerebral palsy for that matter.
However, those early year becomes quite frantic, especially for families raising children with cerebral palsy, that is the time parents are directed to all sort of places with the aim of looking for a Cure”, Mrs Awadzi said.
She said a major role of the centre will be to provide professional counselling to such families, having gone through that as a mother of a child with cerebral palsy and having trained as a professional counsellor.
The Inclusive Centre located at Salem Estate, Malejor, along the Adentan – Dodowa road, will focus on recreational therapy (play) for the children, knowing that children learn a lot through play with the aim of developing their brains.
The Inclusive Centre will be formally launched in September 2019 but has started enrolling children.
Mrs Awadzi said the Special Mothers Project will also continue to engage society, especially the media, the department of social welfare and other stakeholders to continue conversations on how “we can together enhance the lives of families raising children with cerebral palsy and achieve inclusion.”
