Date of Award

Spring 10-1-2021

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Bachelor of Occupational Therapy

Department

Department of Occupational Therapy

First Advisor

Gloria Ann Joseph

Second Advisor

Robin P Daniel

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Social inclusion is a complex and often misunderstood concept by our society. Few studies have documented the degree of loneliness, bullying and exclusion often experienced by children and adolescents throughout their lives. Most of the articles talks about the barriers like physical, attitudinal, curricular, communication, economical, time and skills, environmental that confront with inclusion of children and adolescents with special needs. It has been realized that most of the people with disabilities can lead a better quality of life, if they have equal opportunities and effective access to rehabilitation measures. AIM: To identify the barriers in social inclusion for the children and adolescents with disabilities in India. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Articles related to the paediatric (children and adolescent) disability population with age range 0-18 years in Indian context from September-2009-September-2020 were pertaining on barriers in social inclusion of disabled population in India will be searched in different search engines such as Pub-med, Scopus, Google scholar, Pro Quest, Springer LINK and CINAHL. RESULTS and DISCUSSION: All the barriers has explained into six thematic areas such as: family dynamic, social/community integration, accessibility to education, geographical/economical, Health and mental wellbeing, and Indian Policy and its implementation. High burdens on parents, Lack of awareness, knowledge, perception and attitude of parents towards disability and potential socio-cultural barriers lead to children with disabilities are not receiving the proper intervention treatments at the right time. Both personal (Denial of disability, denial of rights, sexual identity of disable person) and social (social boycott, lack of accessibility and physical barriers which is seen in society/community) can adversely affect social inclusion. less likely to start school and more school dropout due to restriction of time and skills, physical barriers, attitudinal barriers, communication barriers and financial barriers. Financial barriers like medical expenses, lack of awareness and knowledge about disabilities and health insurance scheme, cognitive barriers like religious views, structural barriers like availability and accessibility of services and location of services, lack of transport, transportation charge, affect accessibility to health services. The need for new legislation for prevention of child sexual abuse, child trafficking was addressed and also, the need for systematic development of documentation system, monitoring, research evaluation of existing program as well. It shows that education is the key to social mobilization and to improve their status in the society. Challenges faced while implementing the disability act in India were attitudinal and environmental barriers which hindered their social participation and focused on persons with mental health rights LIMITATION: Since the topic restricted to the age group of (0-18 years) population and Indian context, number of articles retrieved were less. IMPLICATIONS: Government should promote more awareness programs to support disabled people and their families. This scoping review focused only about the barriers or problems of the disabled paediatric population, hence recommending to research on various solutions or strategies to overcome those problems. CONCLUSION: This scoping review revealed the major barriers, areas and problems faced by disabled paediatric population and their families. Social inclusion will be successful if they diagnosed, treated early with easy accessibility of health care facility in more remote area, and provide education and develop skills for their daily living and rights.

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