Evaluation Report of Support for Children with Disabilities

Recent Events

Background Information

GCF operates a preschool/kindergarten in K in Sumatra. Every year about 80-90 children follow kindergarten education for one or two years. The children are aged 4-7 and at the age of 6 or 7 they will go to a local elementary school which are free. Children with special needs in the area usually enrol in these local government schools or do not go to school at all if they seem to be unable to go to a normal school and then have no activities at all.   

Over the last ten years GCF has had a number of children come to the kindergarten with needs or disabilities. These disabilities were on a wide range from physical disabilities, sight and hearing problems, cerebral palsy. Some children had different neurodivergent problems and often children had multiple needs. The teachers of GCF tried to integrate all these children into the mainstream kindergarten education. For some children this was possible but for some their mental level was too low or disabilities too severe to join in with the normal classes. 

The families of these children do not have the basic resources to support their children. Parents are brickmakers and often need to both work to earn a living. Generally, they do not have much knowledge and understanding about the disabilities their children have. Parents either do not want to accept that their children are different and do not offer extra support. Or if the disability is more visible, they see their children as handicapped and therefor unable to develop. The children are generally not assessed or diagnosed by an expert. All in all, these children have not many opportunities to develop themselves. 

The last year GCF has taken a more outreaching and active approach to support the development and education of the children with special needs in our working area.  Global community Friends has experience that parents are very happy for GCF staff to come along side and GCF can be an active witness by helping the community to love and support these children. It is a very new thought to the local people that children with disabilities can develop if given special attention. Our core principle in GCF is to see all children develop to their full potential. 

In August 2025 GCF was able to recruit one social worker who could focus on helping children with disabilities. She is still being trained on the job. GCF has used the last 10 months to work with 18-22 children age 2-19 years old as a pilot for GCF.   

What We Were Able To Do For Children With Special Needs

- 5 children who have multiple and profound disabilities received regular home visits
- 2 children came to the development centre for regular developmental activities
- 3 children received special remedial teaching in the development centre whilst schooling at the kindergarten
- 2 teenage girls with a physical disability received mentoring and support
- 1 teenage girl was helped to access the regular middle school, testing for hearing aids, psychological testing and received home support.
- 5 children with learning difficulties received regular kindergarten education and received extra remedial teaching by their teachers but would actually need more support.
- 3 children were identified as having special needs and are in a normal elementary school and would need more support. GCF was still unable to follow up adequately due to time constraints. Also, the local elementary schools have identified each to around 20 children with special needs in their schools.
- 2 children were identified to have dropped out of elementary school and GCF is still hoping to follow up in time for them to get back to school in the new school year. 

Outcomes Networking

GCF has used this school year 2025-2026 as a pilot period to do more networking to explore more the challenges and the opportunities that are in working with the children with special needs in the area. 

Summarizing our findings of the last 8 months:

Local elementary schools:
There are number of local elementary schools in the area that have per school around 20-30 children who have moderate to severe difficulties with learning and could use help. Schools have to accept all children as long as they can hear, see and speak. The government has enrolled this as inclusive education but teachers do not have training in how to integrate these children in the mainstream education. Schools will help the children to go to the next grades but without actually being able to do what their peers do (e.g. in 4th grade still not being able to read) nor do they have any special learning objectives that are reasonable for them. The government has given the teachers last year one training to be an inclusive school, but teachers feel they lack skills, time and materials to help the children with learning difficulties. The schools showed an openness to receive training for teachers or seminars for parents. 

Opportunity: running teacher trainings which would meanwhile help us to build relationships with the school

Government school for children with disabilities:
There is a school for children with special needs about 9 kilometers from our kindergarten. This is for children who can still learn either academically or improve daily skills. (IQ above 45 was mentioned and being teachable). The school has over 300 students from age 7-18 with all kinds of disabilities (hard hearing, blind, autistic spectrum, down syndrome etc.) They receive teaching in small groups of maximum 7 children with similar disabilities. The school is willing to work together with GCF and can receive new children. They are limited to receive children with severe behaviour issues since the school cannot provide one on one lessons. There are reasonable facilities for elementary aged children and for middle and high school aged children there are also classrooms to learn basic skills like sewing, computer skills, basic farming, cooking and batik painting. The teachers mostly received their training in another city or on another island and some are only trained as normal teachers and learned working with special needs children on the job. Overall, there is a good friendly atmosphere in the school. Since this is a government school it is free for students. Parents do need to pay for the uniforms. There also is a dormitory there for children in high school who are independent enough to stay there. 

Some of the children GCF has met whose learning stagnates in the normal elementary school could benefit from going to this school since it has a more appropriate teaching style. 

However, since the school is 9 kilometers away from our kindergarten it is not accessible for most parents in our area. Parents often do not have a motorbike or money for petrol, or they do not have the time in their working schedule to drive up and down that far. 

GCF has found one of the families willing to bring their 9-year-old boy there starting in July 2026 and GCF is currently trying to help with the application. This is a trial for GCF to see how this enrolment is done. For this boy we hope it will be a good place for him since he is not schooling at all currently. Through this process GCF can also gain experience and see if this school is an option for some of the other children. The boy will be tested by the psychologist at the school for a small fee.

Opportunity: supporting some other children to register at this school

Challenge: organizing transport to this school to create access for more children to go there. A vehicle and driver would be needed to do this. 

Challenge: motivating parents and their current elementary school teachers to accept that there are children who would benefit more from special education than regular education. There is still a stigma for handicapped, and parents wish to keep up appearance that their child is normal. 

Assessment and diagnosing children with special needs:
GCF has learned this year that in the free medical system there is an opportunity to be tested by a psychologist, however a child can only be referred if it has a medical problem first. GCF was able to try this process with a teenage girl since her middle school requested her to be tested. She turned out to have medium hearing problems and though the local clinic could not refer her to the psychologist to be tested, the specialist could. It took 5 mornings of assessment and came with a diagnosis report. But scores in the report however were so low (below 40 even though she can read and write) that the validity of the assessment is doubted. Furthermore, the psychologist advised the family for her to stay in mainstream high school even though she could benefit a lot from learning practical skills at the special high school rather than sitting in with academic classes she cannot follow. The local middle school is willing to adjust her report-card scores based on the report of psychologist and will help her to stay in school for the coming years. Academically she will probably not learn much there but at least it will give her daily routine and social interaction.

Challenge: finding different ways of testing that are good and affordable and locally accepted by schools and parents. Testing that actually gives guidance to how the child can be helped by GCF or by the schools. 

Other schools and therapy centres: 
GCF has visited a number of other special kids schools and therapy centres to see how they function, to observe their classes and see which population of children they serve. These centres are non'-subsidized and parents pay for schooling and the different therapies offered. 

In all the places there are only opportunities for children of middle functioning intellectual levels. (IQ 45-80). There are no centres, facilities or help for the profound (multiple) handicapped. We have brought this question to the social department of the government who also confirms there is nothing for these children. 

Opportunities: We are serving now 5 children with regular home visits who are profound multiple handicapped and are unable to participate in a school setting. Possibly more children are in the working area. Some might be able to come to our development centre; some might need activities offered at home.

Challenge: our staff needs to learn more about how to serve this group of children and what activities can be taught to the parents that they could do at home. 

Opportunities: Parents are open for help and usually loving towards their children. During house visits parents are open to have conversations about many topics.

Challenges: The family situations are often very complex due poverty. Parents need to work, have no transport, have no medical equipment like a wheelchair or the children are regularly sick with epileptic seizures, skin, gut or lung disease. Often the parents are not able to grasp the conditions of their children and therefor it is hard to work together with the parents in a way that the children progress in their development. 

Opportunity: We have found one school for special needs children with a boarding facility run by catholic nuns who are willing to take in younger children 

Challenge: We do not have enough staff hours to do this weekly for all the children who need it.  

Current Issues and Challenges

Recruiting Suitable Staff

In looking for social workers or teachers for working with handicapped it has proven to be hard to find people. In many schools and therapy centres there is a shortage of teachers and therapists who able to work with children with special needs. For two years now there has been a new faculty for education for children with special needs here in the city and the first students will graduate in 2027. All these students already heave job placements in advance laid out for them so it is not expected GCF can recruit staff from there soon. Maybe in the future this is possible. The teachers who work currently in the schools or centres for children with special needs were trained in another city or on another island or do not have educational background for working with disabled children. 

However, the faculty leader of the new mayor special needs education is very open to work together in different ways; to give a seminar to parents or teachers or for field visits. 

For the centre to get the acknowledgement of government and other institutions it would be best also to recruit a psychologist with experience in working with disabled children.  

Challenge: finding qualified staff teachers or psychologist who are willing to pioneering work at the grassroot level of GCF

Challenge: identifying someone from the young leaders program or of our current GCF staff to be trained at the local university with the commitment then to work at the GCF development centre (this will take over 3 years). 

Plans for 2026-2027

1) GCF is looking to recruit one more teacher or psychologist so one person can be full-time at the development centre for running developmental one-on-one activities with a number of children and also giving remedial teaching. Then the other social worker can focus on doing home visits and networking activities. 

2) GCF is hoping to support 10 children at the development centre and helping 5-8 children with developmental activities during home visits.

3) GCF is hoping to dress one room properly for working with the disabled children. (investing in some teaching resources, a cupboard to store it and furniture and mats.) 

4) Identifying, testing 3 children and motivating parents to enrol them in special children education.

5) Running a seminar for teachers and a seminar for parents of children with learning difficulties.

6) Looking into the necessity or possibility to organize transportation to the special kids school, finding funds for a car and driver.

7) Developing a building plan for a learning centre where among our other activities there would be another two or three rooms for working with children with disabilities to be used in 2028. This would be in the same location as the kindergarten. The learning centre would also have rooms for other GCF activities.

8) Running at least two trainings for our staff about working with children with disabilities. 

9) Inviting trained volunteers from abroad to work alongside our staff to teach them new skills and understanding of working with handicapped people.