Vincent Ogutu

Bold Question: What if children with disabilities (0-6 years) were able to receive early intervention services in order to be ready to attend school at the right time?

Path to Metis: Vincent works as the Head of Programmes at Cheshire Disability Services Kenya (CDSK), with focus on improving life prospects of children with disabilities. 

Cheshire Disability Services Kenya (CDSK) have programmes including; Inclusive lifelong education, livelihood and economic empowerment, sexual reproductive health and rights and institutional development

In his work around disability rights and inclusion, Vincent’s subject of interest is access to quality inclusive education for children with disabilities that is responsive to their learning needs. 

Vincent has worked in the education ecosystem (primary, secondary, TVET and higher education) from an inclusive education / training programming perspective to ensure that pupils, trainees and students with disabilities are included in the learning and training process. 

While he has seen positive results on this front, Vincent was concerned that children with disabilities start school late due to late interventions in their lives. It is due to this that with the support of Association of University Centres on Disability (AUCD) | Humanity & Inclusion (HI) him and a fellow carried out a research dubbed, ‘’Status Review of Early Intervention Services (Health, Education & Social Services) for 0-6 Year Old Children with Disabilities – Towards promotion of on-time school enrolment of children with disabilities (a fellowship grant by the US Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.’’

The findings of the research pointed to the need for a multi-sectoral approach amongst the responsible line ministries on the early intervention services for children with disabilities. The research consequently informed the development of a project titled,’ ’Inclusive Early Childhood Development & Education (IECDE) Project,’’ that will be implemented in the Western part of Kenya overseen by him. 

Vincent is hopeful that from the IECDE Project, he will be able to showcase promising practices that can be modelled to ensure that early intervention services are better organised to facilitate school readiness for children with disabilities.

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