Results
In Saudi Arabia, three central government arms are responsible for offering various services to the disabled children (Mcvie 2011). The ministry of education is responsible for provision of education to children that live with disabilities (Goodley and Runswick-Cole 2011). It operates the Noor Institute for the Blind, the Amal Institute for the Deaf and the Institute for the Intellectually Disabled.
However, the Al Noor training centre for children with special needs is faced by a myriad of problems (Pitts & Stevens 2011). The centre lacks proper facilities for catering to visually impaired students and students are sometimes forced to leave the institution early as a result of this (Priestly 2010).
Parents of children suffering from disabilities have also raised concerns that these institutions fail to make themselves, as well as their procedures of admission, known to the general public (Pratibha et al. 2011).
In addition, the centre doesn’t seem to be aware of other special educational institutes for visually impaired children and hence at times, expatriate children are at most risk of not having an education. This complaint has been met by denial by the authorities responsible for education of visually impaired children (Mcvie 2011).
There are those that insist that there are sufficient educational centers for these children in Jeddah, but a few reported that such schools had been closed and the children moved to mainstream public schools (Runswick-Cole 2010).
This compounded the issues of education among visually impaired children as these schools lack books in Braille in addition to lack of staff that are trained to deal with visually impaired pupils (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
The ministry of labor is in charge of supervising activities that are for the vocational rehabilitation and social inclusion of children with disabilities (Priestly 2010). The problems associated with accessing these services have been identified as problems with the service providers, problems of lack of awareness of these services, and culture among others (Winter et al. 2011).
One of the problems facing the government’s policy for vocational rehabilitation and social inclusion of children with disabilities is lack of awareness among parents of these children (Rubin 2011). According to Runswick-Cole (2010), 55.9% of parents of children with disabilities felt that vocational rehabilitation and social inclusion services by the government were not well publicized (Mcvie 2011).
This resulted in lack of awareness by some parents that these services actually existed in Jeddah and failure to realize that their children needed these services (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
Lack of awareness of these services was partially attributed to media limitations. Most of the parents also reported that there was a shortage of these services within Jeddah and that most of them were actually provided by nongovernmental organizations (Winter et al. 2011).
This rendered the parents of disabled children unable to identify or utilize the best services for their children’s disabilities. The culture of Saudi Arabia people’s as a whole is also a deterrent to parents that seek these rehabilitation and inclusion services for their children (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011).
The ministry of health is in charge of provision of health services such as disease control and prevention among children living with disabilities in the Saudi Arabia (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011). The health care system is also accused of being insensitive to the plight of disabled children and of lacking the necessary facilities to accommodate their health needs (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
Children living with disabilities are prone to substandard health care and there seems to be a mentality among health care givers that these are a burden (Priestly 2010). There are reports for example, that even in radiology laboratories, there are no provisions for patients that are not able to stand. The health care workers normally opt to send them home without these tests (Pratibha et al. 2011).
Children with disabilities suffer late diagnosis and even injuries as a result of sound principles to guide the health care community on their handling. Thus it was impossible for these parents to find early mitigation for their children’s disabilities and thus reduce the future suffering of their offspring (Mcvie 2011).
In spite of the country having its own laws for the physically disabled, it has also adopted international statutes such as one from the United Nations (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011). However, enforcement of these laws remains one of the hindrances towards good management of people with disabilities. In addition, there appears to be little innovation to enables these laws to be more effective (Rubin 2011).
Summary
The results above indicate that in spite of the government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia having ample laws and regulations, the children living with disabilities in Jeddah have not had much improvement in their lives as would be expected. This is evident in the Ministry Of Health, Ministry Of Education, And in the Ministry of Labor (Mcvie 2011).
In the ministry of health, this is seen by the fact that the health needs of the disabled children are not in the list of priorities of the health care workers (Pitts & Stevens 2011). The disabled children are treated differently from the rest of the population in that they are expected to undergo tests like the general public in spite of the fact that their disability may hinder them from doing so at times (Rubin 2011).
The attitudes of the health care workers also indicate impatience at dealing with these children and thus diagnosis for them is done late, and they suffer the risk of misdiagnosis as well (Pratibha et al. 2011).
This is in spite of the fact that the country has pledged to ensure equal treatment among disabled and normal children. Education guidance as well as education-vocational development has been left out in most of these institutions (Stevens 2010).
The ministry of education has a clause that is adopted from the United Nations that declares no child may be denied a chance for education as a result of disability (Runswick-Cole 2010). Unfortunately, the state of affairs at the ministry of education is sad as far as the education of disabled children is concerned.
The mechanism in place lacks confidence from the public especially from parents of disabled children as a result of lack of proper facilities, materials, and for their failure to alert parents of their existence. It is especially hard to educate a disabled child of another nationality in Jeddah (Mcvie 2011).
Conclusion
These results indicate the blatant failure of the people involved in the care of disabled children. In as much as there are various factors in play towards this status as it is, the major culprit is the failure of the policies that have been put in place for the purpose of making life better for the disabled children.
The main reasons for failure of these policies may be attributed to lack of clear guidelines for the purpose of making these policies workable (Mcvie 2011). To begin with, according to the general comment No.5 of the committee of economic, social and cultural rights, children living with disabilities should be accorded a higher level of medical attention in comparison to children without disabilities (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
Structural disadvantages should also be minimized with reference to these as well (Rubin 2011). This is for the purpose of leveling the playing ground and offering equal chances and opportunities for all children in the country. Saudi Arabia in general is known to strive to implement these proposals for the purposes of advancing human rights in the nation.
However, there seems to be little effort being done towards the goals spelt out here in Jeddah. There is almost no progress that has been made in the health affairs of the disabled people in Jeddah (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011).
This may be attributed to problems in the process of policy planning and management, decentralization and health information systems. To begin with, the ministry of health, led by the minister of health in charge of the kingdom’s health care.
This ministry is well defined, semi decentralized and in charge of administration of the system (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011). The ministry is responsible for strategic planning, health policies, supervision, control, evaluation and monitoring of all health care activities in the countries; that includes Jeddah (Priestly 2010).
The ministry’s arms have the authority to conduct their mandate but lack financial authority to execute their plans (Mcvie 2011). These arms are the state and local governments and the private sector providers among others. However, this ministry, as a result of over centralizations suffers from administrative and bureaucracy issues.
Before a policy can be implemented, there are too many steps that must be done and this hinders fast implementation of policies (Rubin 2011). Among these procedural issues that face the ministry faces are flow of finances (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
There bureaucratic obstacles that prevent proper flow of money from the ministry and this gets in the way of accomplishing tasks on time. In addition, the bureaucracy is a hindrance to flow of communication between the ministry and the people on the ground (Rubin 2011).
This is what may be attributed to the lack of materials to cater for disabled children at the various health centers or the lack of flow of information concerning the state of health services from the ministry to the workers on the ground and vice versa.
The research concerning health services for the disabled is also a mandate of the ministry of health but unfortunately, the state of the lives of the disabled children is not well known by the people in the higher echelons of the ministry (Mcvie 2011).
The ministry of education in Saudi Arabia is equally responsible for the problems being faced by disabled children in Jeddah (Webb 2010). The ministry suffers from the same problems that plague other ministries in the country including the problems of bureaucracy, over centralization of the ministry’s affairs and the lack of flexibility when dealing with finances (Rubin 2011).
However, this ministry suffers from problems peculiar to its nature such as lack of a definite vision for education of disabled children that is strongly based on research. There seems to be a disconnect between the ministry itself and the people whom it is supposed to serve (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
The situation on the ground is not well known by the ministry officials and therefore the policies that they have been introducing for disabled children may be out of line with what they really need. In addition, the policies that have been adopted by the ministry are more of guidelines with no clear direction for the methods of implementation.
Thus these policies and projects suffer from lack of support or a clear relationship to existing structures within the schools for disabled children; or they are abandoned altogether after a while (Rubin 2011). The teachers that are responsible for the instruction and supervision of disabled children in the special schools and in public schools respectively also lack the capability to deal with disabled children.
In both schools additionally, these teachers are altogether not enough for the services of disabled children (Mcvie 2011). This may be an indicator that the ministry of education does not take the educational needs of disabled children seriously (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
The finances and infrastructure are available for the purposes of employing teachers in these facilities but they are simply not employed by the government institutions. Most of these policies are usually formulated in response to crises in the education of the disabled children or as the brainchild of individual planners within the ministry (Walia & Priestly 2010).
This is seen when ministry officials fail to realize that the schools for the disabled children do not have adequate facilities and that it is a big problem for the parents of other nationalities to enroll their disabled children in proper schools (Webb 2010).
The ministry officials also seem to not be aware that the level at which disabled children transfer from special schools to public schools may be too early (Priestly 2010). This may be attributed to the failure of the ministry’s supervisors to follow up disabled children that have joined mainstream schools (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
In spite of the government claiming to aim for education for all in the country, the reality is quite different especially for the disabled children living in Jeddah alongside their families (Mcvie 2011).
In addition, the ministry of education has done little to alert the parents of the disabled children of the availability of special schools to cater to their needs and has also failed to develop the facilities for these schools (Zand & Pierce 2011).
The ministry of labor, which is also responsible for provision of vocational rehabilitation and social inclusion of physically disabled children, is also fraught with problems as far as policies are concerned (Walia & Priestly 2010). To begin with, they are quite unknown as far as the parents of these children are concerned (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
As a consequence, their children miss out on vocation training and their chances of being absorbed into society. This ministry also does little to conquer the stigma that is associated with disability and thus it does not achieve its full mandate of social inclusion (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011). In addition, students at the institutions of vocational training in Jeddah lack adequate facilities as those in the schools for the disabled (Goodley 2010).
The problems that face the ministry which is charged with task are the generally, the programs that are designed for this group of people at the institutions are not in line with children that are living with disabilities (Howat et al. 2011). There also is lack of coordination by the bodies that are charged with the smooth running of these institutions.
The families of these students are also to blame because they have very low expectations of their children. In addition, the physical conditions that are present at these institutions are difficult for the disabled children to navigate (Mcvie 2011). There exist no mechanism of evaluation of the activities of these centers and the vocational training fails to match the market needs most of the time (Mallett & Runswick-Cole 2010).
This is besides occupational and vocational counseling processes which are not viewed as important (Rubin 2011). These centers are also mostly found in the more developed areas of Jeddah while the less developed regions barely have vocational centers (Priestly 2010).
There is no emphasis on socialization of the students and that means that the ministry is not fulfilling one of its responsibilities (Colin 2011). In addition, the vocational rehabilitation and social inclusion, which under the ministry of labor has failed in its mandate towards disabled children (Rubin 2011).
This is seen in the fact that they provide very few centers for the services, fail to ensure that the general population especially parents to disabled children are aware of the benefits of these services, what services their children may require, and where to get these services from. This indicates another failure of the policies that are instituted by the government (Goodley 2010).
In conclusion, the main problem facing disabled children as far as their health, social life, vocation and health are concerned is the failure of the policies that have been instituted especially by the government agencies (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
These problems have been outlined in this section as contradictory circumstances, paths and results of the policies for control, deregulation and overregulation, the risk of initiatives and risk management and the dominance of some players in their respective fields (Mallett & Runswick-Cole 2010).
These in the case of Jeddah have caused the provision of services critical to the disabled children fail through collapse of various initiatives (Mcvie 2011).
Recommendations
There is need for various organs of the government to make changes in their processes of implementation of policies that are geared towards children living with disabilities (Priestly 2010). To begin with, the government agencies that are responsible should not implement plans without first carrying out research of the state of affairs of these disabled children (Zand & Pierce 2011).
As far as health is concerned, the Saudi Benevolent Association for the Disabled and the subsequent establishment of the Prince Salman Centre for Disability Research are steps that are geared in the right direction towards establishing the needs of the children living with disabilities as well as their care takers (Howat et al. 2011).
This is because as this paper has shown, lack of knowledge of the problems that are facing Saudi children living with disabilities will cause the policy makers to formulate policies that are not in line with the needs of this group of people (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
Secondly, there is need to create divisions that deal with disabled children only. This is because disabled children have different needs from disabled adults (Colin 2011). This will allow accessibility of some of health care services that are known to rectify some disabilities during childhood and thus some disabled children do not have to suffer all the way into adulthood (Mcvie 2011).
Educational needs of children with disabilities should also be catered for separately from the educational needs of the normal children (Priestly 2010). This will enable these children to have systems that are committed to their education and the result will be better facilities and materials at their schools, as well as more specialist teachers (Goodley & Runswick-Cole 2011).
In addition, it may be necessary for the government to consider equipment that may be used by disabled children. This may be very useful especially in hospitals to facilitate adequate diagnosis and hence treatment of disabled children (Pitts & Stevens 2011).
Third, it is important for the government to inform the general public concerning the services that they offer to disabled children (Priestly 2010). This may do through various media as well as physical locations such as mosques and hospitals.
In addition, the government should also enlighten the general public concerning disability. This awareness will see that parents take their disabled children for the services that they need and the general public is not as biased towards disabled children hence promoting acceptance and access to vital services (Goodley 2010).
Last but not least, there is need for the government’s institutions to reform to avoid the bureaucratic obstacles that hinder delivery of services (Pitts & Stevens 2011). The government’s employees may need training on how to organize them in order to be more effective in effecting their decisions, initiative and risk management, as well as policy planning and implementation (Colin 2011).
Over regulation of the state’s organizational structure within the ministries concerned may involve more decentralization of authority to act on the issues of disabled children in particular as well as enable ease of access to the necessary finances (Mcvie 2011).
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