Budaka Cheshire Home

and Rehabilitation Centre, Mbale

Introduction

Budaka Rehabilitation Home is a charitable organisation started in 1970 when buildings became available at a large Catholic mission station. The purpose of the Home was to improve the quality of life for children with disabilities in Palissa and surrounding districts in a relatively poor agricultural area in Eastern Uganda. Through its services disabled children, regardless of sex, colour, tribe or religion are enabled to achieve their potential and lead lives worthy of human beings. Disabilities dealt with include polio, club foot, osteomyelitis, burn contractures, cleft palates and hydrocephalus. Currently, Sister Mary Florence in charge of the home and Sister Elizabeth is her new deputy.

Short-term rehabilitation programmes are carried out including identification and mobilisation of the children, sensitisation of their community, medical or surgical treatment, provision of appliances and follow-ups. The centre is responsible for finding the children in their homes and convincing them that they can be helped in the home and in hospital, a fact which many people in the village doubt.

Programme Objectives

To train parents and family to take full responsibility for caring for their children.
To create opportunities for youngsters with disabilities to develop their potential within their home environment.
To create awareness of the causes, prevention and management of disability in disabled persons, their families and local communities.
To foster the transfer of rehabilitation knowledge and skills in the community.
To promote community initiatives for rehabilitative care.

Activities

The Home works hand in hand with the community-based rehabilitation worker and the local leaders to bring the children for assessment. Every Wednesday the centre pick-up goes out to the villages to bring in the children and their carers for assessment at the centre. If they appear ready for operation they are taken to hospital the next morning where the next course of action is decided by the surgeon. The children who stay at the Home are those who need further treatment and help until they are fit to go back to the village. Sometimes their strength has to be built up by proper feeding before they can undergo surgery. The children attend the near-by schools during the day if they are well enough.

The Home has some land and animal projects which help with food and finance and a knitting workshop run by a severely disabled man which also provides some income. There is a small workshop for repair of appliances.

The number of children at the Home at any one time varies quite considerably depending on finance, but it has been growing steadily to about 50.

Achievements

When FOAG first looked at Budaka about five years ago, the Home was in poor shape, with neglected buildings, poor living conditions for the patients and problems with the agricultural enterprises. For various reasons there has been a dramatic change to which FOAG has been a major contributor, with improved water supply systems, new beds and mattresses and currently with new fuel-efficient stoves, as well as regular funding for children's operations, treatment and medicines. The whole place looks better - roads and buildings repaired, crops growing, productive animals and children looking more cheerful, not least because they no longer have to hand-pump every drop of water.

FOAG's Project Co-Coordinators Report

When the co-ordinator visited Budaka at the end of April 2003, there had been a great improvement in the general appearance and organisation of the Home compared with six months earlier. 25 children were in residence, receiving longer term treatment and two or three were being prepared for operations by better feeding. The agricultural projects were doing well, apart from the turkeys, where only one remained after a visit from a snake. The land was being ploughed for crops to provide maize and vegetables.

The needs of the place are endless, as the operations and treatment have to be paid for, as well as the patients being housed and fed. They use the land and agricultural projects for the maintenance of the children and receive some regular income from the Archdiocese of Tororo and the local Health Authority for staff salaries, vehicles (pick-up and a motorcycle), medicines, supplementary food and general maintenance.