El niño campesino deshabilitado

“Appropriate therapy helps the child to enjoy himself, be useful, and take part with others, while mastering the skills for daily living.”

—Disabled Village Children

Filled with clear and detailed information along with easy-to-implement strategies, Disabled Village Children is for anyone concerned about the well-being of children with disabilities, especially those living in communities with limited resources.

Disabled Village Children explains how to create small community rehabilitation centers and workshops run by people with disabilities or the families of children with disabilities. More than 4,000 drawings and 200 photos illustrate each concept and add to the book’s appeal and accessibility.

This manual covers identifying primary and secondary disabilities, developing skills for daily living, and working through behavior problems. It also features facts about polio, cerebral palsy, juvenile arthritis, muscular dystrophy, and other conditions.

Readers will find instructions on how to build six different wheelchairs using local resources; useful therapy techniques, such as making fun and educational toys; ideas for improving playground accessibility for all children; and low-cost rehabilitation aids and adaptations for home and community.

View Sample Pages Online

Table of Contents

Sample Chapter 4: Examining and Evaluating the Disabled Child

Praise for Disabled Village Children

"...Disabled Village Children is the benchmark manual on community-based rehabilitation... [Hesperian's] new series of books on early intervention for children with disabilities are beautiful as well as extremely useful."
— USAID

"At the Center on Disability Studies at the University of Hawaii, we use Disabled Village Children to teach teachers and family members how to support the related services needs of children with severe disabilities... The book works well for us because it supports simple English with wonderful drawings. Everyone whom we train speaks English as a second language, and everyone appreciates the pictures that illustrate the written concepts. The book clearly explains the most common disabilities and provides good examples of interventions that can be done using locally available materials. We have made wooden and PVC equipment adapted from designs in the book, and used many of the ideas in the book to support the needs of children on very remote islands. The ideas are creative and address basic needs of children with disabilities all over the world."
— Katherine Ratliffe, PhD, PT, Center on Disability Studies, University of Hawaii

"Disabled Village Children is not a book just for children, or just for use in villages, or only for the Third World. This book contains... many thought-provoking rehab ideas which run counter to the traditional Western rehab approach, yet which are eminently appropriate in many areas of the non-Western world."
— Newsletter of the Cross-Cultural and International Physical Therapy Interest Group

"Disabled Village Children is a powerful, engaging, and readable reference for (developing world) health and rehabilitation workers. It provides ideas and techniques relevant for the novice and the veteran, as well as for the interested observer... The power of Disabled Village Children derives from its simplicity as well as from its recurring theme of a "bottom-up" approach to health and rehabilitation in rural communities."
— Marc Krizack, Rehabilitation Consciousness