Understanding the wider needs of children with disabilities

own area of expertise, and treat just one aspect of a child’s health. For the typical community eye worker this focus is, of course, on providing eye care. In reality, most children and their families will have much broader needs and priorities. Without addressing these other issues, or at least referring families to other services, your work may have less impact. In this article we share some experiences from a parent training project in Bangladesh, funded by CBM and carried out in partnership with the Child Sight Foundation, which aims to better equip parents to provide care for children with cerebral palsy. Many children with this condition will have a range of other health issues, which can include being visually impaired. A key fi rst step in our project was to undertake initial interviews with families in order to better understand their priorities. We also wanted to understand, by talking to the children, what their daily lives were like and what was important to them. Being able to go to school was a priority for some children, was the importance of not only focussing our support on access to health services, but also on improved access to education.