Leadership Dev't Programme achieving positive results

The implementation of Leadership Development Programme Plus (LDP+), has led to an increase in service delivery in Accra, Cape Coast and Tamale.

The process of participatory leadership approach by the Planned Parenthood Association of Ghana (PPAG) at the three main points in the LDP+ is a USAID and Management Sciences for Health (MSH) sponsored programme aimed at improving health service delivery through participatory leadership approach.

PPAG has since August 2013 through support from International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF) Africa Region, has started the process of adopting and going through LDP+ to improve service delivery at its facilities through a participatory approach.

In a speech read on her behalf, Dr Catherine Dawson-Amoah, the Executive Director, said in March, 2014 four of the facilities were selected to go through the pilot phase out of which three was successful.

She said the experiences gathered would be shared among other partners and explore other possibilities of extending the programme to other facilities as well as partner other service providers to deliver the tool and facilitate improvement of health service delivery to the people.

Mr Elly Mugumya, Project Director, IPPF Africa Region said she was grateful to partners and stakeholders, especially USAID, the lead partner of the process and management of the initiative.

He said the team at IPPF first went through the LDP+ training and realised that it was a fruitful training which could be extended to other member associations to promote and improve service delivery.

He said the programme which started about six months ago with 14 people trained as trainers of trainers were able to train another 45 people from four zones and urged partners to buy into the initiative and scale it up for the benefit of Ghanaians.

Ms Lourdes de la Peza Casares, Principal Programme Associate of MSH, a consulting firm, said LDP+ is the enhanced version of what MSH had delivered for more than 10 years.

She said LPD+ was a participatory leadership development process that develop people at all levels of the system.

“It is a team work where everybody was taking through learning, leading and managing practices to face challenges and achieve results,” she added.

Ms Casares said the new element in the LDP+ is the strengthening of staff to won the programme and scale it up to improve health delivery system as well as improved preparation of technical coaches within the society.

She said the programme was implemented in Nigeria, Cote d’Ivoire and Uganda and had achieved positive results in all countries.

Accra Family Health Clinic, the first clinic of PPAG, took a project in increasing clients flow to the facility and were able to increase the figure to 1277 clients per month and was hopeful to increase that figure by 25 per cent by January 2015.

Tamale PPAG Clinic which took a project on the uptake of family Planning pills among the youth was able to counsel 1382 youth per month instead of 354.

The story was the same with the Cape Coast Clinic, which worked in the area of managing Reproductive Tract Infections in four selected Senior High Schools in the metropolis.

The programme targeted sensitising 1000 students within the six month but ended sensitizing 2443 students and school nurses; treated 128 patients instead of 120 targeted.

Mr Albert Wuddah-Martey, Director of Programmes, PPAG, said the association welcomed collaboration to scale up the process to other health facilities.

He said they would soon engage Ghana Education Service and Ghana Health Service to make more holistic for the people to learn and practice what they learnt.

“We will also try and see how we can carry out the message of effects of untreated Reproductive tract Infections and sexually Transmitted Diseases beyond the lecturing of biology in our education facilities”, he added.