The identification of continuing education needs for community rehabilitation workers in a rural health district in the Republic of South Africa.

Based on the principle that education is a lifelong process, the paper presents the identification of continuing education needs of community rehabilitation workers, who recently completed a 2-year certificate course in a rural health district of the Republic of South Africa. The need for a new cadre of worker in the rehabilitation field, namely a community-rehabilitation worker (CRW), was advocated by WHO in 1981. The CRW works at the community level to address the needs of disabled people, as part of primary health care services. The nominal group technique (NGT) and a focused group discussion was done with the community rehabilitation workers (n = 8) and their supervisors (n = 5), to identify learning needs that should be addressed through a continuing education programme. Focused group discussions involving people with disabilities and their family members (n = 45), from villages where the CRWs work, were carried out to discover their opinions on skills that the community rehabilitation workers still needed. The results show a strong correlation between the needs identified by the three groups, viz, skills in advocacy and public education, social work, community development and organizational development.