An investigation of early childhood intervention services for children with disabilities and their families in Botswana

Doctor of EducationProfound changes have taken place in policy and practice in early childhood intervention over the past few years. This signifies a paradigm shift from the traditional to the more sophisticated 'state of the art' approaches to service delivery in early childhood intervention. Central to the debate on early childhood intervention has been the purpose it serves and the involvement of families in early childhood programmes. While the review of early childhood intervention literature indicated widespread agreement on the importance of early intervention services, it is clear that the provision of services is still very low in some countries, especially developing countries like Botswana. The aim of this study was to investigate how early childhood intervention was addressed in the Revised National Policy on Education (1994) and how the policy has been implemented by the practitioners and how the family perspective has been incorporated in service delivery. To achieve the objectives, this study employed a mixed methods approach using one-to-one in-depth interviews with ministry officials and programme coordinators, two focus groups of parents and family members, and a questionnaire for 100 teachers. The main findings are that early childhood intervention services in Botswana are still very limited and unevenly distributed. Second, there is a limited number of qualified early intervention staff leading to inadequate services for families and children with disability. Third, coordination of service provision between the ministries involved is complex, weak and at times dysfunctional. This needs to be strengthened in addition to more active government participation rather than leaving this responsibility almost totally on NGOs. Fourth, there seems to be a general consensus that engaging families and local community could have significant advantages. Finally, it is noted that good policy is just one half of the solution; the other is effective implementation through coordination and monitoring of ongoing activities to ensure public policy objectives are met