Mellen Kemunto Marucha is the senior programme coordinator at Sense International in Kenya – an organisation dedicated to working with and for people with complex and multiple disabilities to ensure they have the right to live, learn and thrive in an inclusive society.

Sense International was a partner in our project in Kenya, which focused on gathering evidence about how to provide inclusive and affordable early years education in mainstream schools in Homabay in western Kenya, and Kakuma refugee camp in northern Kenya.

Mellen’s story

“Children’s early years are an essential time in their growth and development. Through our work at Sense International, Kenya, we focus on reaching children with complex disabilities early to ensure they can get the best start in life, walk with them into inclusive education, and later into vocational training and livelihoods. This life cycle approach ensures that they can go on to achieve their full potential.

“In the Inclusive Futures project in Homabay, we worked with government-run Education Assessment and Resource Centres to identify and assess 45 learners with disabilities who qualified to receive home-based education.

“We then recruited learner support assistants to teach the children at home. We wanted the support assistants to be familiar with the learners they were working with, so we recruited people from the same communities and trained them on how to assist learners with complex disabilities.”

From home-based learning into mainstream education

“Learners with complex disabilities often experience delayed milestones and require specific therapeutic interventions. To address this, we worked with hospitals in Homabay and Mbita in western Kenya where the learners received physiotherapy and occupational therapy. This helped the learners to gain important mobility and sensory skills to help them better engage with the learning process.

“Our goal was always for the home-based learners to at one point transit to school. However, mainstream schools often lack the capacity or expertise to support learners with complex disabilities. To address this, we collaborated with project schools, which had already been sensitised in inclusive education by Sightsavers, to help them prepare to accept and admit the learners. Simply placing a learner with complex disabilities in a mainstream classroom without guided support is ineffective. Therefore, we ensured that the children who transitioned into school would have the help of support assistants.

“All learners with disabilities are given individualized education plans, where teachers record quarterly or monthly milestones. However, we discovered this approach wasn’t sufficient for children with complex disabilities. These learners need a daily record book to capture the daily, small but important achievements, such as learners being able to hold a spoon and put food in their mouths.”