Standing by themselves: Caregivers’ strategies to ensure the right to education for children with disabilities in Orange Farm,South Africa

Abstract

This article describes the strategies employed by caregivers in accessing the right to education for their children with disabilities in Orange Farm, Gauteng. Children with disabilities are one of South Africa’s most vulnerable population groups. Despite enabling legal and policy reform, children with disabilities face unconstitutional attitudinal and environmental barriers to accessing the nonprogressive right to a basic education. This case study examines the caregivers’ self-efficacy, agency and the opportunity structures within which they are operating using an interdisciplinary theoretical framework and a qualitative methodology. The article will provide detailed examples of the agentic strategies that caregivers devise, in the face of hostile and unaccommodating bureaucratic institutions, disjointed referral mechanisms, discriminatory norms, stigmatising discourses and unjust power relations.