Date: June 2009
A.B. Maritime sponsors Project Therapy Ghana 
Last June three therapists (Laura Scawn, Trudy Richards and Sally Brown) travelled to Sekondi Takoradi with a group of staff and students from Plymouth high School for Girls. Our aim was to spend the week at Twin City Special School assessing whether there was physiotherapy and occupational therapy need .A teaching link had already been established with Woodlands school in Plymouth, where all three of us work. There is very little funding for children with special needs in Ghana although with the expected income from oil it is hoped that matters will improve. We were made very welcome by pupils and staff. We had to devise a method of assessing the children to ensure that we were to get the full picture of their needs. We found that there were 16 young people that had problems that we were able to help with. Eight of these appeared to have a type of cerebral palsy that is very rarely seen in the UK due to the high level of pre and post natal care. The staff at the school had almost no equipment to work with these children, who were living in poverty and whilst not starving were clearly malnourished .Despite these difficulties we were able to have several sessions teaching the staff about the children’s conditions and giving them ideas on how to help them. We adapted a desk using locally resourced materials to enable the children to be more supported in sitting, making it easier for them to write. The School was on top of a hill, it did not have running water due to lack of water pressure so any water that they needed was collected in containers by the school driver. The School was by our standards derelict and completely unsuitable for any children. There is a new school being built and we were told that the school would have moved to the new site by August. We have yet to hear. Having found that there is a need for therapy at the school we are now considering how to take it forward. Once the school is moved to the new site there should be opportunities to work with both the staff and pupils. We hope that there will be another visit next year to build on what we achieved this year and to look at the possibility of developing a play area for the children. This trip was mostly self- funded although we were given money to buy equipment by several sponsors. We would be delighted to hear from anyone who maybe able to offer help to Project Therapy-Ghana. Sally Brown Email Sally.A.C.Brown@Gmail.com
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