Community-based rehab, diagnostic center eyed
THE CITY Council approved on first reading a proposed ordinance establishing a community-based rehabilitation training and diagnostic center for persons with disabilities (PWDs) in the city, adopting a comprehensive program and for other purposes.
Councilors Arthur Alad-iw, Maria Mylen Victoria Yaranon and Francisco Roberto A. Ortega VI, in their proposed resolution stated the local government should adopt an integrated and comprehensive approach to health development and to adopt an integrated and comprehensive program for the health development of PWDs which shall ensure the accessibility of health services to the PWDs.
The ordinance aims to establish a self-sustaining training and diagnostic center for persons with disabilities in the city where multi-trainings needed to address the special concerns of all categories of disability shall be institutionalized and integrated with each other.
The different centers will also serve as a city level community-based rehabilitation center of training and resources, both human and technical, and it shall monitor, supervise, and provide support to the technical needs of its satellite communitybased rehabilitation programs and initiatives in the city’s 128 barangays.
Further, the center shall likewise provide direct diagnostic and rehabilitation services to walk in PWD clients and residents of the city, who are in need of special health care.
The ordinance added the center’s programs and services will be mainly focused on the provision of primary diagnostic and rehabilitation services and therapy on medical, eye care service, hearing services, physiotherapy, physical therapy, occupational therapy, orientation and mobility trainings, speech therapy, psychological counseling, orthotics and prosthetics, and other devices, and special education, integrating a social and livelihood component for continuous empowerment for its PWD clients.
According to the ordinance, the center will train, capacitate, and
provide specialists and trainers who specialize in each kind of disability such as psychological and behavioural disability, chronic illnesses with disability, learning, cognitive or intellectual, disability, mental, including dementia, and alzheimer’s disease, visual or seeing disability, orthopedic moving, communications deficits and other disabilities.
Moreover, the center will train its community-based rehabilitation workers to provide basic levels of service in early childhood intervention and referral, especially to medical rehabilitation services; education and regular schools, nonformal education where regular schooling is not available, special education in regular or special schools, sign language training, braille system training, and training in daily living skills.