Evaluation of the community-based rehabilitation programme in Uganda

The Community Based Rehabilitation Programme (CBR) in Tororo district, Uganda aims to achieve full integration of disabled persons in the main streams of society by undertaking rehabilitation measures at community levels that use and build on local resources available in the community. This paper presents the findings of an external evaluation of the programme, and assesses the extent to which this overall objective has been met.

The main achievements of the programme include:

• the number of disabled people actually receiving assistance has been impressive, and the mobilisation of and support for communities has been significant
• high levels of stakeholder participation have been experienced in the planning and execution of awareness and monitoring activities
• consultations with various stakeholders also confirmed a change in perception of CBR from a programme to deliver services to a programme in which disabled people and communities identify themselves as partners in mobilisation of assistance, not only as receivers of services
• the programme has contributed to more mainstreaming of services from health clinics, assistive aid workshops, integration of more disabled people in schools and enabled then to benefit more from agriculture extension service programmes
• it has contributed to increased assurance, accountability and ownership of funds allocated to the programme.

Some of the major challeges include:

• a reallocation of finances to the local-level would enable the mobilisation of more volunteers and resources to strengthen their capacity
• to support the process of adjusting planning with more focus on results, external technical assistance should be made available to facilitate the planning process
• there is a need for independent auditing to investigate the discrepancies in regional and sub-regional financial management
• a gradual expansion of the programme is recommended to ensure that experience is gained from other district environments before considering scaling up CBR to all districts
• the number of districts for the next stage will depend on how much resources can be made available through reallocation of current CBR resources, how much additional funding can be secured and the human resources available to support introduction of the model to new districts.