ASSESSING AUTISM CARE, TREATMENT AND SERVICES CHALLENGES IN ETHIOPIA CATHOLIC CHURCH MISSIONARIES

Abstract

Autism is a complex neurobehavioral disorder that includes impairments in social interaction and developmental language and communication skills combined with rigid, repetitive behaviors. The main objective of the study was to explore autism care, treatment and challenges in Ethiopia Catholic Church Missionary (Brothers) autism center. To achieve this objective a descriptive design was employed. Both primary and secondary data were used to empirically analyze the issue. The primary data was gathered from both employees of the center and its beneficiaries (9) through semi structured interview. The empirical finding of this research indicates that the center includes autistic from the street and women and children’s affairs office. Though there is certain improvement on the awareness of the society, still autistic persons are neglected. The care services in the center are only feeding, washing, and other external activities. They rarely work on the development of skills towards the children. The activities of the center are more focus on one of occupational therapy which is handwriting skills. But there is limited effort on speech therapy which teaches verbal skills that can help people with autism communicate better. The center’s focus on the education provision for the autistics is very little and they are not able to identify the necessary care services for each person. There is weak evaluation on the effect of the medicine.The findings also indicate that the center involvement with key stakeholders is not strong enough. Therefore, to improve the performance of the center the researcher recommended that it is important to expand the awareness of the society and the center should include more professionals to bring fruitful change in the in the autistics life.