Difficulties for mothers in using an early intervention service for children with cerebral palsy in Bangladesh

Given the numbers of disabled children in Bangladesh and the lack of traine d professionals, innovative forms of service delivery are required. The Ban gladesh Protibondhi Foundation has developed an outreach parent training se rvice based at two centres, one urban and one rural. Mothers are shown how to use pictorially based Distance Training Packages (DTP), which they take home. This paper presents findings concerning factors which seem to affect mothers' attendance with their children at DTP advisory sessions. The study followed 47 children with cerebral palsy, aged between 2 and 5.5 years, ov er a period of around 18 months. The main factors predicting higher attenda nce were the child's sex (i.e, boys were brought back more often), particul arly in the rural area, and lower adaptation to the child reported by the m other. The problems described by mothers in using the DTP advisory service were economic (such as transport costs), cultural (such as mothers not bein g permitted out alone), and medical (such as the child having repeated fits ). The implications for future service development are discussed.