A TRAINING STRATEGY FOR PERSONNEL WORKING IN DEVELOPING-COUNTRIES

Throughout the world a common consensus has emerged that community bas ed services offer the best prospect of meeting the needs of people wit h disabilities and their families. However the shift away from special ist centres and institutions has not been accompanied as yet by a reap praisal of the training required by personnel working in these new for ms of services. This paper describes the training strategy which has b een developed by the Community Based Rehabilitation Programme in Guyan a, South America. This has three components. First, the identification of training needs of families and support workers, second, the produc tion of video-based training packages on specific topics and third, th e utilisation of available personnel to act as local tutors. This stra tegy has resulted in over 7000 CBR volunteers, health workers, teacher s in mainstream schools, families and villagers having access to infor mation and skills which otherwise they would be denied. An immediate p riority in developing countries is to nurture the human resources requ ired to develop and sustain this sort of training strategy and proposa ls for doing this are outlined.