To Support Children with Disabilities

The representatives from certain ministries, nongovernmental organizations and institutions for children with disabilities have recently discussed in Chisinau within the workshop, new considerations for treatment of the disabled people in the Republic of Moldova. At the workshop the participants discussed national legislation and policies of the state institutions in the field of the disabled children from the country and their fitting to international standards, especially community ones. They also examined new methods of disabled children treatment.
The workshop was organized within the project Stability Pact in the South-East Europe “Realization of social cohesion by means of passing from residential treatment of the disabled children to their community treatment”.

Country manager of the project, Jana Chihai***, mentions that within this workshop the participants expressed a number of recommendations which will be presented to the resort institutions. 

„These are numerous problems which have been identified by the experts at the workshop”, says Jana Chihai.

Some of the recommendations expressed by the participants at the workshop:

• Adoption of the norms regarding the definition of the notion of “disability” and “invalidity”. In the Moldovan profile system these notions are often used wrong, but specialty recommendations issued by the Word Health Organization are not applied or are even neglected;
  
• Elaboration of the criteria to determine the states of disability;
  
• Creation of the intersectional workgroup (between medical, social, educational and cultural services) which will deal with the monitoring of the problems of the disabled children;
  
• Modification and improvement of the evidence system of disabilities, their types in the Republic of Moldova while at the moment there is incoherence between the data received from different institutions working in this field. Elaboration of the centralized statistical system, which will be regularly updated;
  
• Creation of the specialized services for children depending on their disability (creation of the centers for children who suffer autism or for children with behavior disorders, etc);
  
• The necessity of continuous instruction of the personnel involved in rehabilitation of children with behavior problems.
  
  The project Stability Pact in the South-East Europe “Realization of social cohesion by means of passing from residential treatment of the disabled children to their community treatment” is implemented in the Republic of Moldova beginning with the October 2009.

Relevant statistical data:

In the country there are around 429 thousand of children suffering different pathologies, of which 44 thousands possess different grades of the invalidity; In the structure of primary invalidity among children the first place take malign tumors (19,0%). The second place take nervous system diseases (9%), they are followed by mental and behavior disorders (7%); In Moldova there function 67 institutions for children with disabilities; More that 11 thousand of children are institutionalized; In Moldova there function 30 centers for social protection of families with disabled children which render services for more than  700 children.

*** Jana Chihai is the president of the Association SOMATO from Balti