All Inclusive - Ldv Partnership

Association “Chid and Space” – Small group care home

 

Established in 2010, with the help of Médecins du Monde, Unicef, and other donations in Sofia, Bulgaria. It was the first center of its kind in Bulgaria.  Funded partly by the government of Bulgaria, which is financing each children for the room and board, but not the nurses. Other funds must be raised by the organization.

 

The national context

 

The national context until 2000s was the following: children with special needs were grown up separated from their families, often under recommendation of doctors (children’s care in Bulgaria, until their third year is a medical problem) in huge institutions, hidden from the eyes of the world, mostly forgotten by the society and even by their family. To change that situation Bulgaria had to wait until a big international scandal in the 90s, when a british journalist has made a service about these dishuman conditions, and after the things was becoming to change. Slowly, as we’ll see it. Anyway the huge institutions are existing also in our days, despite continuation of scandals.

Many children were introduced in those centers and institutionalized by carelessness of the doctors or by their misdiagnoses. Families were urged to leave their children also with minor problems or disabilities in that specific institutions, sometimes far away from their home.

Nowadays, although the legislative lacks, the policy is to close those big centers and put the children in small group care homes.  The aim is that children would get into the small group care homes directly from families, not from the big institutions. Also if they have the same problems there is a difference between children according to the origin. In “Child and Space” we knew a ten years old girl who’s been left after her birth in a big institution and left for almost the whole time in a bed with bars and fed with liquids. The result was terrifying: she was unable to sit and for any communication. Although parents have no education of that kind, but certainly they would not treat their children like that. Today the aim of the Bulgarian specialist is to work together with families. But this is only a will for the future, due to the many lacks existing in the country (laws, mentality and money problems).

The problem is that in Bulgaria the legislative deficiencies about the treatment of small children by the institutions are existing the same way today. The chaotic political situation of the country of these times has prevented a vote on a proposed new law with respect to childhood.

 

The structure and the staff

 

This institution is situated in the suburb of Sofia, in a friendly context, not far from the center of the town. The building was remodeled nicely and equipped with lift before the opening and adapted for 8 children with strong disabilities (blindness, paralysis, and so on), from 9 to 18 years old. The rooms are for two persons, and at the roof there is a large and well equipped recreation room with an own kitchen, where the staff prepares meals, involving the children.

The nurses who take care to children for 24 hours a day, are without specific profession. That is not required by the institutions, by law.

The center has a director and a psychologist and external special teachers for the education and specialist from the University for rehabilitation cares.

We found that all the staff were really kind and devoted to the children and the institution was friendly and has a family atmosphere.

 

Activities and treatments

 

The nurses are working with children following an individual program, mostly developing consciousness of their own body, their own movements, to connect their minds to the body and vice versa.

We found interesting - an example of a reverse integration -, that one of the nurses who’s working in the institution, having a 5 years old son, without any other solution keeps his son with herself during the working hours: his child has no problem with playing with the other strongly disable mates.

Children also receive an education by special teachers for Monday till Friday until 2 p.m. (they are following a special individualised program for each child, elaborated together by nurses, psychologist, teachers and other specialist) and rehabilitative cares by University specialists.

Sometimes the institution organizes a kind of small holidays sending the children in other centers.

The institution has a small garden where they can spend spare times, and often they go out to the public garden, although the sidewalks in Sofia are dangerous not only for wheelchairs but able people, too.

Due to financing problems they do not have any other possibility to leave the institution.

 

 

The future of the children

 

The children of the institution, due to their multiply disabilities, physical and mental, have few possibilities to be integrated with able children. The small group works as a kind of family. They know each other, they work together during activities for years.

Without direct experience in the past, the management and the special staff are thinking about the future of their children.  After their 18th birthday they should leave the institution. But outside they have no any possibility, given the lack of any other institution of the same kind for adults. They are not able to manage themselves, especially to find a job, to be on their own. In this case, they would need other institutions to continue to be protected and developed. The question is: if in the small group care home they felt themselves at home, with their “brothers and sisters”, why they should leave?

 

Ádám Fekete – Progetti Nonprofit Kft.