As we continue to embrace the new care reforms that require children under residential care to leave Charitable Children’s Institutions and join alternative family care options, our focus has been on how to expand the Hattie’s House Therapy & Respite Centre and reach out to more needy children with disabilities.

Last month our team of seven people that included occupational therapists, social workers, special needs teacher and a driver went to Ganze town to create awareness on the services we offer as well us conduct functional, educational and household assessments to children with disabilities. We used the area chief and village elders to mobilise the people to come and we hired a hall some few meters away from the chief’s office. We collaborated with an organisation called Special Olympics Kenya who were targeting to identify households with children with disabilities to support them to start Income Generating Activities.

Ganze town is in Ganze Sub County in the western part of Kilifi County and is one of the poorest sub counties in Kilifi. The residents rely heavily on agro-pastoral activities but it has not rained for a very long period and recently the national disaster team declared it as a drought hit area hence experiencing stressed food security. We started our journey from the orphanage at around 6:30 am and reached the venue by around 9:15am. We were shocked to see more than 100 people had already assembled at the venue waiting for us.

We started our program straightaway without wasting any time. We did the introductions that included a talk about what we do as an organisation before sensitising the crowd on different disability issues. Thereafter, we did the assessments and managed to assess 90 children with different disabilities and 42 qualified to join our facility. Sincerely, we were all shocked to see there were very many children with disabilities who have never had any access to therapy services. We see a very huge gap that needs intervention. Therefore, we beseech all our well-wishers to support these children because their parents cannot afford transport to our facility and sending our team to do outreach programs would definitely require extra resources.

We offer our appreciation to all those who made this activity a success especially the GLO team, Special Olympics Kenya and off course the donors who tirelessly support Hattie’s House Therapy & Respite Centre.

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