The Centre for Learning and Childhood Disabilities (CLCD) is exploring a project dubbed: Our Peer -Empowerment and Navigational Support (OP-ENS)” where selected parents of children with disabilities will be trained to serve as peer navigators.
Under the project, three Peer Health Navigators (PHN), all parents of children with disabilities have been trained to empower other parents of children with disabilities by providing them individualized support and structured problem-solving skills to overcome barriers to healthcare.
Ms Esinam Adade, a Researcher at CLCD who facilitated the PHN training, said most persons with disabilities have poorer access to health care and poorer health and a Peer Health Navigator could help remove some of these barriers.
She said the PHN programme have been used successfully in cancer and chronic illness treatment to reduce health disparities.
Ms Adade said the CLCD PHN programme is tailored to meet the primary needs of caregivers of children with disabilities.
She urged the trainees to integrate their unique experiences and background with the course content.
The trainees were taken through the various Developmental Disabilities, their symptoms, the risk factors, some basic management techniques, and the available resources that could help parents of children with disabilities.
