Abstract
Access to essential social services such as education, health, water and sanitation is a challenge to many residents living in coastal Kenya. Kenya Coastal Development Project (KCDP), a World Bank funded multi-sectoral initiative, implemented its Community Development Fund popularly referred to in Swahili as Hazina Ya Maendeleo Ya Pwani-HMP to improve access to social services among the coastal communities in Kenya. The HMP adopted the Community Driven Development (CDD) approach, whose underlying philosophy is community participation in the delivery of social services and the management of coastal natural resources. In this study, therefore, the extent to which community participation improved access to social services among the coastal communities was assessed using four dimensions of access comprising: availability, affordability, geographical accessibility, and acceptability. A total of 285 respondents from community project beneficiary groups were interviewed across the six coastal counties. There was a significant relationship between community participation and affordability of social services. The results also revealed that there was no significant relationship between community participation and the other dimensions of access namely: availability, geographical accessibility and acceptability of social services. The study indicates that community participation in development interventions is effective in enhancing affordability of social services. Conversely, it cautions that community participation in itself is not necessarily a panacea to fully address the challenge of limitation of access to social services, in terms of availability, geographical accessibility and acceptability of these services. The study concludes that other factors exist besides community participation that influences availability, geographical accessibility and acceptability of social services. Hence, it is difficult to attribute the outcomes of any local service delivery initiative singly on citizen participation.
Highlights
Access is a multi-dimensional concept and currently without one universally accepted definition
The results revealed that there was no significant relationship between community participation and the other dimensions of access namely: availability, geographical accessibility and acceptability of social services
There was no significant relationship between community participation and improvement in availability, acceptability and geographical accessibility of social services at the Kenya coast
Summary
Access is a multi-dimensional concept and currently without one universally accepted definition. “access” is defined as the availability of at least 20 litres of water per person per day from an “improved” source within 1 kilometre of the user’s dwelling [3]. This definition only focuses on the distance and quantity of water but says little with regards to adequacy of the 20 litres in addressing the needs of an individual person, considering the different uses of water per household on daily basis. There are many definitions of access to health services with most researchers recognizing that access is related to the timely use of services according to need [4]. The present study uses a conceptual framework that builds on these longstanding descriptions of access to health services
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