Mother of cerebral palsy child establishes Inclusive Educational Centre

Mrs Ellen Affam-Dadzie, a mother of a seven-year old girl with cerebral palsy, has established an Inclusive Educational Centre to cater for children with special needs and offer the parents the opportunity to work and earn an income.

The Centre; “With God Cerebral Palsy Ghana,” also offers physiotherapy services and provides quality care for children with cerebral palsy for free.

Mrs Affam-Dadzie, in an interview with the media, said she knew how stressful and frustrating it was to have a child with the condition and decided to offer support to enable mothers of such children to earn an income.

“I do not believe that any family or person should become poor simply because they had a child with cerebral palsy. The mothers’ inability to work, among other factors, is what causes many families to kill these children or even wish their children dead,” she said.

Mrs Affam-Dadzie said since government was not doing much to support families of such children, she decided to start the Centre as her contribution towards reducing their burden.

She said the Centre also gave the children with special needs an opportunity to mingle with other children, adding; “We are practicing inclusion.”

Mrs Affam-Dadzie called on the Government to ensure that the inclusive education policy embraced majority of children with cerebral palsy, if not all.

She said the very few schools in Ghana that admitted children with the condition were very expensive, which many parents could not afford.

“We also intend to set the mothers up in small enterprises so we train the unemployed mothers in soap, beads, batik and tie and dye making among other things, and we hope that corporate organisations will come on board to help us enhance the lives of families with children who have cerebral palsy,” she said.

Mrs Hannah Awadzi, Initiator of the Special Mothers Project, lauded the initiative saying; “This is what the project is looking for; we need mothers to take up the fight for services and do something to help children with cerebral palsy.

She called on the Government, corporate organisations and volunteers; both home and abroad, to support the Centre to make it viable.

Source: GNA