Training Community Health Workers to Support Families of Children With Disabilities: Lessons Learned and Practical...

Area of Science:

• Global Health
• Disability Studies
• Community Health

Background:

• Community health workers (CHWs) are vital for public health, especially in resource-limited areas.
• Supporting families of children with disabilities requires specialized training and community-based interventions.
• Existing knowledge on training CHWs for disability support in low-income settings is limited.

Purpose of the Study:

• To describe the training and supervision model for CHWs supporting families of children with disabilities in Lusaka, Zambia.
• To evaluate the impact of the training on CHW knowledge, skills, and attitudes.
• To identify successes and challenges in implementing a community-based disability support program.

Main Methods:

• A partnership between US faculty and a local Zambian organization developed a multiday experiential training for CHW supervisors.
• Supervisors then trained community-based CHWs (volunteers).
• An evaluation assessed knowledge, skills, and attitudes of supervisors and CHWs regarding children with disabilities.

Main Results:

• Supervisors and CHWs demonstrated significant gains in knowledge and skills related to working with children with disabilities.
• Attitude scales showed less robust changes among CHWs concerning children with disabilities.
• Project implementation faced delays due to the timing of training just before the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conclusions:

• The training successfully enhanced CHW knowledge and skills, underscoring the importance of local partnerships for contextual relevance and ongoing supervision.
• Sustained program fidelity requires continuous support and supervision for CHWs.
• This initiative contributes to the limited evidence base for supporting children with disabilities and their families in low-resource contexts.