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It is generally difficult for the government to come up with any meaningful programs for persons with disabilities (PWDs) unless statistics to that effect have been made available. Disability Statistics in Uganda is one of those areas of social statistics which has been growing at a slow pace in the past compared to other socioeconomic indicators, but now is an area of growing concern and picking up steadily. Censuses have remained the major data providers for disability statistics and the first of which was the 1991 census. The 2002 census similarly collected information on PWDs, and this information is to be widely disseminated at national and lower levels. Both censuses were conducted by the Uganda Bureau of Statistics (UBOS). UBOS has collected similar but a little more detailed information on disability using two household surveys.

However for effective program design, implementation and resource allocation for PWDs, a lot needs to be done in terms of harmonizing the concepts on disability with the International Classification of Functional Disability and Health (ICF). The power of the census results is that it provides data to the lowest administrative level. Conducting a fully fledged national survey for PWDs will provide adequate baseline data for meaningful purposes and priority issues for government and other users.

This report provides information on the various sources of disability data and how concepts are defined by each institution. It highlights the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, Ministry of Education and Sports (Annual School Census and the Department for Special Needs), Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development (Community-Based Rehabilitation Program) and the Ministry of Health as data collecting institutions. It is noted that each institution use different concepts and methodology for data collection. Engaging both users and producers in the disability data production process, encouraging regular dialogue and establishing collaborative arrangements with local and international research institutions are avenues for utilizing the scarce resources for the development of disability statistics. The focus and direction of the development of disability statistics in Uganda calls for a sustained system of monitoring intervention that government and other development partners have to put in place.

The issues raised in this report will facilitate the process of harmonisation of concepts and definitions used while collecting disability data. It is noted that except for the Community-Based Rehabilitation Information pilot system under the Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development, there is little or no use at all of the ICF. The pilot system is ongoing and is expected to expand to other districts. It is hoped that this will enrich the process of harmonizing concepts with the Integrated Community-Based Rehabilitation Information System to provide meaningful results. The process of coordination is hereby called for.

This chapter focuses on the experiences of disabled Tamil and Sinhalese women in Sri Lanka.

Using fieldwork observations and in-depth interviews obtained through Community-Based Rehabilitation (CBR) programs over 13 months across four distinct districts in Sri Lanka, we examine complex sociocultural issues at the intersection of gender and disability.

These women’s narratives about their lives show the physical and social barriers related to the accessibility of everyday activities, and also the complex gender norms relating to social expectations to stay hidden from public view, contradictory messages around love and marriage, and reactions to and consequences of being disabled women in public.

The results support calls to prioritize disabled voices in disability research in the Global South, which is currently dominated by a CBR approach in the name of “development.” These data also show the need to systematically address power relations currently at work in policies, practices, and communities that perpetuate disablement; document the need for communities and research to be more inclusive; and obligate scholars and practitioners to be more aware of how the CBR context may aim for development and change, yet often maintain highly gendered economic, political, and social processes of isolation. This project illustrates the ways in which careful attention to personal stories can illuminate complex socio-cultural processes. The chapter also brings voices of women in the Global South into the discourses on narratives and disability, both of which are dominated by perspectives from the industrialized west.

The Ghana chapter on special education begins with the history of service provisions for persons with disabilities. It includes information on educational and rehabilitation services, special schools and integrated education. Detailed data is related concerning prevalence and incidence rates and special needs among the Ghana population. This is followed by a comprehensive section on regular and special education teacher roles, expectations, and training. An important aspect of Ghana’s special education is its movement towards inclusive education. The support for this movement comes from the Ministry of Education’s policy, namely, The Education Strategic Plan (ESP), which adopts inclusive education and promotes it as the future special education direction for the country. The chapter provides detailed information on the issues related to the implementation of the ESP plan, four models that have been developed for inclusive education, the progress and effort that Ghana has made towards inclusive education as well as significant challenges that are present.

Community-based disaster risk management (CBDRM) initiatives have strong roots in Philippine society not only because of the country's contributory vulnerability to disasters but also because of a culture of community cooperation known as bayanihan and a history of social movement driven by the citizens’ discontent with bad governance leading to social injustice and environmental degradation (Heijmans, 2009). CBDRM in the Philippines has been a mechanism for change within civil society (Allen, 2006; Heijmans, 2009). In this way, community-based approaches are a fundamental form of empowerment of participants and a compelling strategy for enforcing the transmission of ideas and claims from the bottom up (Allen, 2006).

In this study, I explore what happens “after incarceration” from the perspective of private prison vendors. Using the experience of women prisoners in California in the aftermath of Brown vs Plata (2011) and Realignment, I trace the rise and growing popularity of carceral rehabilitation programs. Although rehabilitation was once considered an antidote to mass incarceration and the prison industrial complex, it now fuels the growth of private prison companies and provides a stable source of profitability. This analysis suggests the reconfiguration of mass incarceration in the US rather than its dissolution.

Reexamination and reinterpretation of the process of deinstitutionalization of public mental hospital inpatients.

A comprehensive review of related research is presented and lessons learned for the sociology of mental health are identified.

The processes of both institutionalization and deinstitutionalization were motivated by belief in the influence of the social environment on the course of mental illness, but while in the early 19th century the social environment of the mental hospital was seen as therapeutic, later in the 20th century the now primarily custodial social environment of large state mental hospitals was seen as iatrogenic. Nonetheless, research in both periods indicated the benefit of socially supportive environments in the hospital, while research on programs for deinstitutionalized patients and for homeless persons indicated the value of comparable features in community programs.

While the process of deinstitutionalization is largely concluded, research should focus on identifying features of the social environment that can maximize rehabilitation.

The debate over the merits of hospital-based and community-based mental health services is misplaced; policies should instead focus on the alternatives for providing socially supportive environments. Deinstitutionalization in the absence of socially supportive programs has been associated with increased rates of homelessness and incarceration among those most chronically ill.

A comprehensive analysis of deinstitutionalization that highlights flaws in prior sociological perspectives and charts a new direction for scholarship.

Creative entrepreneurship is a vital concept that revolves around setting up a business that is novel, thoughtful, lucrative, and yet compassionate. The global pandemic has made people realise the significance and importance of creative entrepreneurship. Self-help groups (SHGs) play a pivotal role in boosting the rural economy and empowering people. Rural creative entrepreneurship has witnessed a significant transformation during the COVID-19 pandemic. The conventional concepts vanished due to the modern shift towards digitisation. Usage of the technology became the new normal and SHGs made all possible efforts to acclimatise promptly. Online virtual meetings, conference calls, and groups on WhatsApp made common people techno-savvy, facilitating work from home. The adoption of digitisation became a catalyst for the development of remote/rural areas. The present study is focused on the role of creative entrepreneurship in supporting and helping SHGs to function seamlessly during the COVID-19 pandemic. The authors aimed at analysing pandemic and post-pandemic creative entrepreneurship through SHGs in Himachal Pradesh (India). The authors identify that Creative Entrepreneurship initiatives have changed and supported the livelihood of rural people during the pandemic. This chapter also highlights challenges faced by the SHGs during the lockdown and their resilience strategies.