Report on Development of Children with Disabilities’ and Parents’ Wellbeing and Inclusion Checklist Tool 2023 - Phase 2

Abstract

This report describes participatory research undertaken in 2023 as part of the UK-aid funded Disability Inclusive Development programme. Under this programme, Task Order 27 developed a model of disability-inclusive education in selected schools in Kaduna State, Nigeria and the authors of this report worked on the development of a tool to measure how children with disabilities (and their parents) perceive their inclusion in school and society, as well as their wellbeing. This report covers Phase 2 of the research, when the team re-visited the schools to repeat the piloting of the revised checklists to (1) explore whether the revisions to the checklists (designed in Phase 1) improved their useability for a range of respondents and made the data they produced more specific and useful, and (2) to learn whether the schools and the communities (where the SMILE project had been doing a variety of interventions to promote inclusion), were now perceived by the children and their parents to be more inclusive and supportive of their wellbeing. This report shares the findings, describes how the revised versions worked and what they told us about the children’s and parents’ experiences. Finally, some suggestions are made about how these tools could be developed and rolled out further.