Finding ways to ensure that children with disabilities, especially girls, can safely speak out about school-related gender-based violence (SRGBV) is challenging, but essential. Globally, SRGBV is a huge challenge and impacts more than 246 million children and adolescents a year. Children with disabilities are three to four times more likely to experience violence than other children, yet very little is known about how it affects them, or how to ensure they feel safe at school.

That’s why Sightsavers is conducting an innovative research project with schoolchildren with disabilities in junior secondary schools in Sierra Leone to understand how gender-based violence affects them and what they want to be done to address it. Ensuring that children with disabilities are actively involved is crucial to making sure that policies and interventions are effective and truly disability inclusive.

Why Sightsavers is working in Sierra Leone

In Sierra Leone, high levels of SRGBV are a profound challenge, driven by deeply rooted social and economic inequalities. Data on prevalence is limited, but in a 2010 survey, 6% of girls reported having been raped in or around school. Additionally, qualitative research provides extensive evidence of widespread sexual harassment, bullying and sexual violence in and around schools. This is often perpetuated by peers, teachers and even community members, and contributes to many girls leaving school in early adolescence. However, little is known about how this violence affects children with disabilities. Sierra Leone’s 2021 National Policy on Radical Inclusion in School prioritises the inclusion of children with disabilities in education. Ensuring that children with disabilities can thrive at school requires understanding and addressing their specific safety needs.

In response to this need, our study focuses on four junior secondary schools in the Karene district in northwestern Sierra Leone and supports the creation of disability-inclusive SRGBV response action plans building on the experiences, needs and concerns of children with disabilities. Funded by the Sexual Violence Research Initiative, we’re collaborating with two organisations of people with disabilities (OPDs): the African Youths with Disabilities Network and Concern for the Development of Disabled Women and Children.

Rosanna Kamara and Abu Bakarr Bangura, co-investigators from these OPDs, are active members of the core study team. In each of the four communities, two young people with disabilities are also working for the study as Young Researchers. This approach is part of Sightsavers’ commitment to involving people with disabilities in disability research, recognising that their lived experience strengthens research and ensures its relevance to children’s lives.

A research approach based on children with disabilities’ experiences, needs and concerns

The methodology we are using supports and encourages children with disabilities to describe their experiences, needs and concerns, and ensures their input guides the co-development of local SRGBV-response work plans. Across the four schools, 33 girls with disabilities and 37 boys with disabilities participated in focus group discussions (FGDs) led by the Young Researchers. These FGDs provided small groups of children with a safe, confidential opportunity for a discussion of how they understand SRGBV, and how it affects them. This was followed by a community mapping activity where children showed researchers where they felt the most and least safe, and researchers photographed these locations.

The Young Researchers are recent graduates of local schools. We provided them with extensive training and close, supportive supervision to equip them to lead data collection activities with children with disabilities. Children participating in the study were already familiar with them and respected them, often looking up to them as role models.

Young Researchers are familiar faces who know and understand the schools, making it easier for the children with disabilities to talk openly to them. The Young Researchers also helped organise focus group discussions with teachers, parents and other community stakeholders. They are now helping prepare workshops in each community where preliminary study findings will be shared, and community and education system stakeholders will work together to create disability-inclusive SRGBV-response action plans.

Learnings from the Young Researchers programme

1. Training Young Researchers takes time and effort but pays massive dividends in ensuring that children with disabilities feel confident to discuss sensitive topics like SRGBV.

As the Young Researchers didn’t have previous research experience, our training needed to provide an easily-understood introduction to key concepts, such as GBV awareness, our study methodology, and the principles around research ethics and safeguarding. Young Researchers were trained in how to lead participatory focus groups with children, record discussion notes, and collect participatory GIS mapping and photovoice using a digital data collection application.

SRGBV is a sensitive topic that is often challenging for children to speak about in the presence of adults. They can worry about the repercussions of sharing information or feel concerned about ‘causing trouble’ for others. To help children feel more comfortable, Young Researchers visited schools in advance of the FGDs to build rapport with the children. They explained that they lived in the same communities as the children, and that they shared the same challenges and aspirations. By building trust and familiarity in this way, Young Researchers were able to support the children to find safe ways to share their views and experiences.

The Young Researchers’ own lived experience of disability also meant they had a strong understanding of what support or adaptations children needed to ensure their full participation in study activities – like moving closer to children with hearing impairments to ensure they could hear, or giving children with speech impairments ample time to speak and repeating themselves if needed. Focus groups were held in well-lit areas to accommodate the needs of children with visual impairments, and Young Researchers were alert to children’s non-verbal cues and responses throughout the discussions.

2. Children and community members came into study activities with very little understanding of SRGBV and it took some time before study participants were able to recognise and describe their own experiences of SRGBV.

This meant that some focus group discussions took longer than expected, as it was important to allow enough time to ensure a shared understanding of SRGBV among participants and researchers.  Young Researchers played a central role in this, drawing on their familiarity with the local context and language, and using local terms that children could more easily understand.

This finding highlights the need for greater attention to be paid to ensuring messaging around SRGVB reaches children and community members. Messaging must be inclusive of and accessible to children with diverse disabilities, so that children are empowered with language and tools to express concerns.

3. The lack of access to reporting mechanisms and support services for SRGBV is a major challenge for children, as well as community members.

This theme came up consistently in focus group discussions across all four school communities. Children often felt that they were unable to report SRGBV, or that reports would not be taken seriously – and might even make things worse. Children, especially girls, who reported incidents were sometimes blamed for causing them. Some boys, however, felt that they were punished for incidents they hadn’t been involved in.

As researchers, we experienced the limitations of support services directly when we attempted to link children who had shared experiences of abuse to local services. We found that they were not able to offer support due to staff turnover. We therefore prioritised working directly with schools to build their knowledge and skills to manage these concerns.

Given the importance of this challenge, identifying strategies and tools to strengthen reporting and support services will be an important focus for our participatory action workshops. It’s essential that children face no repercussions when reporting abuse and violence, and this remains a crucial area for action within the education sector.

4. Study co-investigators from OPDs have grown in confidence and skills and are now equipped to contribute nuanced and relevant insights to data analysis and to facilitate the upcoming community workshops.

This learning is important not just for the study itself, but also because it empowers these researchers, and the OPDs they represent, to become generators of research evidence. This strengthens their ability and confidence to influence policy development and their ability to interrogate research evidence shared by others. This matters as it helps ensure that disability inclusion receives appropriate attention and investment.

Next steps to make schools safer for children with disabilities

Researchers will be returning to study schools to validate study findings and to co-develop disability inclusive SRGBV response action plans. To learn more about our work, visit our research centre or contact Dr Steven Kaindaneh at skaindaneh@sightsavers.org.

Watch the video where Dr Kaindaneh presents the research project supported by an SVRI Research Grant.

This blog was written by Dr Steven Kaindeneh, who provides technical support to inclusive education research at Sightsavers and is Principal Investigator for this study; Dr Julia de Kadt, Sightsavers’ head of portfolio for Health and Disability Research; and Sapana Basnet, Sightsavers’ Senior Research Associate in Qualitative Methods. Alexandre Chailloux, Sightsavers’ Senior Research Associate in Spatial Analysis, also contributed to the preparation of this blog post. This blog post was originally published on Sightsavers’ website.

Meet co-investigator Rosanna Kamara

Meet co-investigator Abu Bakarr Bangura

Meet Young Researcher Sadah Fofanah

Meet Young Researcher Dauda Munu

The other Young Researchers taking part in the study are Idrissa Samura, Mariatu Bah, Adikali Samura, Zainab Kamara, Alieu Bah and Saidu Bangura.