COMMUNITY-LED TRANSFORMATION
The Centre was therefore turned into a rehabilitation institution. Now the Centre receives an average of 100 physically disabled children per annum. A total of 2,801 children have graduated from the Centre and are now active participants in nation building, and a total of 63,120 persons have benefited from the services of the centre since inception. The Centre also receives children with disabilities from Samburu, West Pokot, Baringo, Machakos, Makueni, Nairobi, Narok and Northern Tanzania. Due to this increased demand, the Child Care Centre operates another branch in Baringo which is fully operational.
The Child Care Centre is an institution for the rehabilitation of mainly the physically disabled children. It was started in 1979 by 2 African Inland Church Missionaries with the assistance of the African Medical and Research Foundation (AMREF) and the AIC Church Kenya through the local AIC Church, as a place to feed and treat malnourished children during a famine. In the process the team found that there were so many physically disabled children as a result of polio and many other diseases causing severe paralysis. These children with physical disability were growing up in hard and harsh conditions of life owing to the semi-arid nature of the environment and the nomadic-pastoralist way of life of their parents. Yet the children were in dire need of orthopedic surgery, physiotherapy and long term post-operative care and rehabilitation.
Clinical Department
The Centre first and foremost assesses children with disabilities to establish the type of disability, whether they suffer from any diseases and placement to appropriate learning places. The children with disabilities are then referred to relevant institutions for medical treatment in hospitals and dispensaries, to the CCC for education and rehabilitation, to integrated units for education and to special schools (e.g. school for the deaf, blind etc) for rehabilitation, education and vocational skill training. The Centre does this in conjunction with its stakeholders and partners like the PCEA KORC, the AIC Kajiado Dispensary and the Kijabe Mission Hospital just to mention a few.
The Centre itself offers boarding facilities to children undergoing rehabilitation and education. Children in the Centre receive education at nearby schools with integrated units that is AIC Girls Primary Boarding School and Olkejuado Primary Boys Boarding School. The Centre facilitates rehabilitation of CWD’s through provision of pre and post-operative care, continuous physiotherapy, spiritual nourishment, education sponsorship and donating orthopedic appliances made in its workshop and donated by other donors. The organization runs an educational Centre within its premises.
In a bid to gradually change the negative perceptions of the community to CWDs, the Centre conducts annual or bi-annual awareness & sensitization workshops in the local community within Kajiado County as a way of seeking to influence/remove the wrong notions that have developed over time and bring into light issues affecting CWDs and the support available.
The Centre also runs a home based care program for children with cerebral palsy. This includes a feeding program for the severely malnourished cerebral palsy children, physiotherapy exercises for the children and training of parents of these children on proper home based care and rehabilitation of the children. These parents are organized into support groups for ease of training & psychosocial support
