Community rehabilitation workers: do they offer hope to disabled people in South Africa's rural areas?

This article outlines the thinking behind the Wits/Tintswalo community rehabilitation worker training programme which is located in South Africa's eastern Transvaal Lowveld. Drawing on a combination of qualitative and quantitative evidence collected during the first eighteen months in which the CRWs were working full-time (January 1993 - June 1994) it suggests that the two year training programme has been successful in providing therapeutic skills. Key issues raised are whether the coverage of disability is adequate in terms of numbers treated or in terms of categories of disability treated.