OBSERVE
3.5 THE ROLES OF THE PARTICIPANTS IN THE STUDY
and prepared agendas and completed the minutes of these meetings. She appeared to take a responsible role and related well to the director and the child development officers. She was extremely insightful in her observations and I found her notes very helpful. She was then moved to her second placement and a new research assistant replaced her.
This assistant did not attend module 6, the first planning meeting for module 7, and the first planning meeting for module 8. The director of the CORC prepared the agendas for all the planning meetings. This research assistant's style and interaction with the centre appeared more formal, detached and less interested.
Her observations were not as detailed as the previous researcher. This research assistant also conducted the focus groups with some of the trainers and trainees at the end of the training session.
The data generated by these two research assistants formed two of the sources of data for this study.
3.5.2. Trainers
The definition of trainers in this study are those who contributed to the content of a particular module. The trainers were volunteers who either had specialised knowledge in a certain area, or else had expressed an interest in training a particular module. Some were of professional status and others were people who had a certain amount of experience and interest.
The presence of the trainers during the course of the programme was an
opportunity to allow these trainers to rethink their role in the community and their relationships with the caregivers of disabled children. A more implicit goal was, in a sense, for the programme to provide sensitivity training for the trainers as some of the professionals may have had difficulty relating to the realities of the mothers' lives. For example, in an underresourced area, realistic suggestions
for self-help needed to be made and suggestions that a mother living in a poor, rural community should have consulted a physiotherapist for her child's
treatment, would have been met with resistance. Furthermore, such advice may also have negatively impacted on that trainer's credibility, leading to all her advice being viewed in a skeptical light.
It was decided in the original proposal that all material to be presented would be agreed on in the preliminary planning meeting for each module. The trainers would need to present their material in a participatory and non-judgmental manner. The trainers would circulate amongst groups during the group
discussions to ensure they were being adequately facilitated and that during the feedback of the group discussion, any incorrect information or 'blaming' was to be dealt with tactfully. Finally, the feedback gathered from the group
discussions in each session would be summarized, ensuring that the key concepts decided at the training meeting had been adequately covered and understood.
3.5.3. Facilitators
The facilitator in this study is the term used for those volunteers who did not actively develop or contribute to the material being presented, but had attended the preliminary planning meetings. Their role in the programme was to create a 'bridge' between the trainers and the trainees. Furthermore, they were skilled in translation between English and Zulu. Two of the facilitators were Child
Development Officers employed at the CORC, one was a childcare worker and one was a regular attendee at the CORC and the mother of a hearing impaired child. This fourth lady was asked to be the trainer for the Mpophomeni based training programme. Although all four had extensive experience in caring for children with multiple disabilities, none were of a professional status. All four underwent a three hour basic training in facilitative skills run by the director of the center. Although the original proposal envisaged that the facilitators would
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be consistent from session to session, providing continuity by their presence, this did not always occur.
The role of the facilitator was to ensure that everyone in the group understood the question or issue that was to be discussed. Furthermore, they were to ensure that everyone had an opportunity to speak with no one person
dominating the discussion. The facilitator was to keep the group focused on the task at hand and any blaming of the mother was to be tactfully reframed. Each trainee's contribution was to be clearly summarised and ensured that it was understood by all of the group members. The facilitator could allow other participants to be the scribe.
3.5.4. Trainees
As preViously mentioned, the trainees targeted to attend the training course were mothers and caregivers of disabled children and educare workers. The latter category included nurses, and creche and teacher assistants who work directly with disabled children. Some of the trainees were regular clients of the centre, whereas others were new and as such did not know the other trainees.
Furthermore, the trainees were from different socio-economic, cultural and educational levels. This broad grouping resulted in trainees responding and interacting to different degrees.
The trainees also consisted ofprofessional and random observers:
The professional observers were people who offered advice or assistance with the content of the course but did not participate in the delivery of the training modules. They attended the course as observers and participants.
The random observers were participants who simply showed an interest and arrived ad hoc. They were not invited to make any contributions to the content of the course, although they did participate in the proceedings.
In conclusion, this chapter has described why I chose the qualitative research methods to investigate the effects of the training programme for caregivers of children with multiple disabilities. It shows the appropriateness of qualitative research methods in the realm of community psychology and outlines various themes that were considered in implementing and monitoring this programme.
Issues of sampling, triangulation, observation techniques and data collection and recording were presented. The model of action research is the inductive method used to analyse the findings and these will be presented in the Chapter four. Finally, the initial planning and the implementation of the training
programme were described above.
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