Ghana Somubi Dwumadie (Ghana Participation Programme)

The Issue

Ghana Somubi Dwumadie is a four-year disability programme in Ghana with a specific focus on mental health that is funded with UK aid from the UK government. It is a consortium managed programme, led by Options Consultancy Services with Basic Needs Ghana, Kings College London, Sightsavers International, and Tropical Health and focuses on four key areas:
1. Promoting stronger policies and systems that respect the rights of people with disabilities, including people with mental health disabilities
2. Scaling up high quality and accessible mental health services
3. Reducing stigma and discrimination against people with disabilities, including mental health disabilities
4. Generating evidence to inform policy and practice on the effectiveness of disability and mental health programmes and interventions
Tropical Health, as a consortium partner, provides technical assistance to enable programme delivery and monitoring against these four key areas.

Our Approach

Tropical Health’s key deliverables for the programme to date include :
• Technical leadership to develop and operationalise the programme’s Monitoring Evaluation and Learning (MEL) framework.
• Provision of a series of learning products for the programme to help inform future work and adaptation.
• Delivery of support and expertise to enable the appointment, inauguration, induction and training of members of Ghana’s first Mental Health Review Tribunal (the first of its kind in Ghana) in collaboration with the Ghana Mental Health Authority.
• Review of barriers and access to psychotropic medicines, and provision of strategies for mitigation and recommendation for the way forward, in collaboration with the Ghana Mental Health Authority.
• Rapid review of institutional MEL capacity and associate capacity building plan for the Ghana Mental Health Authority
• Technical support to the programme’s rapid assessment and its summary of the impact of COVID-19 on people with disabilities, including people with mental health disabilities in Ghana.
• Technical leadership and input into the development of a study and its summary on stigma and discrimination; leading on the literature review.
• Technical advice and input to the research review and report on mental health and disability in Ghana.

Our Findings

Products delivered by Tropical Health include:
• Ghana Mental Health Review Tribunal manual for effective practice and protection of human rights (2023) and induction training package for Mental Health Review Tribunal (2022)
• Policy Brief: Access to psychotropic medicines in Ghana: Issues, strategies and recommendations (2023) and Report on “Access to psychotropic medicines in Ghana’ (2021)
• Institutional M&E capacity assessment and capacity building plan for Mental Health Authority (2021) and Learning product: Lessons learnt from work completed by Ghana Somubi Dwumadie with the Mental Health Authority to help strengthen their institutional M&E capacity (2021)
• Technical support to the programme’s rapid assessment of the impact of COVID-19 on people with disabilities, including people with mental health disabilities in Ghana (2020)
• A series of learning products for the programme including:
o Managing learning in a multi-stakeholder disability and mental health inclusion programme
o Developing an investment case for mental health financing
o How inception work and scoping studies informed and shaped Ghana Somubi Dwumadie
Further information about the work of the programme, and access to the Tropical Health deliverables can be found here