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  Issue 46

   

Intellectual disability and employment

Fight for bigger participation in society

The day centre for accepting people with intellectual disability is situated in the shopping centre Biser in Skopje, in which the users start coming at 7 o’clock in the morning, time when the other citizens of Skopje hurry towards their working places, schools, kindergartens. Before nine o’clock, the users whose age limit is over 16 years, can be seen buying part of the necessary products for preparing lunch, at the nearby market. The day centre has existed for four years, it’s part of the activities of the Republic centre for support of the people with intellectual disability “Poraka” and, except in Skopje, there are also centres in Ohrid, Radovis, Kocani. At the day centre the users not only have the possibility to be accepted, but also under the leadership of defectologists, social workers and a psychologist to be included in activities that provide them to get skills for their independent lives, for managing in society. The day when we were present at the start of one working February day at the Centre, we were also present at several hours of the serving the civilian military service of three young people. The defectologist Viktor Borisovski, while the users were sitting together on the tables and making cards and flower pots, pointed out that the expert team tries every day to realize part of the foreseen individual programme also through group activity.

“That working principle is taken from the western countries and really shows great results. Beside the other things, for these four years, we have succeeded to train the users to use the public transport. At the beginning all the parents brought and took the children, and now 90% of them are using the transport independently. The changes can be seen, at the beginning maybe it was difficult to notice them, but if we return where we were at the beginning and where we are now, there is progress with the users. We are working on getting hygiene habits, on getting skills for manipulating with objects, space orientation, money orientation etc. We also realize part of the activities outside the Day centre, during which we meet certain events and activities, and the surrounding itself meets us as well”.

The Centre is part of an urban area, around and above it there are residential buildings, cafes, shops, every day city noise, atmosphere that is above all the so far stereotype ideas for isolated objects in which the people with intellectual disability should stay. The reform process of deinstitutionalization, prevention of institutionalization that is conducted by “Poraka” is part of the every day work of its members. “Starting from 2000 “Poraka” was actively included in that reform, that is taking place at a world level and means realization of the need the big residential institutions to close gradually and to create possibilities for layers of more local units. In every of the local communities there should be one service that would take the users daily, and there should also be services for independent living, where the users according to there possibilities, with the supervision and support from expert personnel, would live as a family. Those services still don’t exist here. The day centres are necessary for giving support of the families, for taking the people during the day, a possibility for the family to get time for itself, for creating an atmosphere of more successful family functioning” – says Vlado Krstovski, a social worker and programme assistant.

Opening new centres depends on establishing cooperation with the government, creating a proper model of partnership, because “Poraka” realizes its activities through projects. They still get formal support from the government, which accepts the need for existence of these centres, but there isn’t a partner contract for financing the service department.

“We are working on breaking the prejudice that still exists in our society. If in the western countries you can see the people with different kinds of disability everywhere where people actively move, that’s not the case in our country. This fact itself talks about the reserve of our society towards these people”, says Vasilka Dimoska, manager of “Poraka”, in the conversation led at the Day centre, at the same time paying unhidden attention to one of the users that was showing her his latest picture. For her, as for the other members of Poraka, it’s important that, apart from everything, the people in this country are slowly opening themselves and accepting the participation of people with intellectual disability in society.

The last campaign of “Poraka” is led under the motto “What’s happening with my rights”, and is present also through the media in Macedonian and Albanian. It’s a campaign for support of the employment of people with intellectual disability, with which the attention of the public is turned towards breaking the prejudice and the improper treatment of people with intellectual disability at the working place and building a positive image for the potentials and possibilities of the people with intellectual disability as employed people. “The problem of employing the people with intellectual disability was pointed out by the parents and the people themselves, that’s why we wanted to bring it to the surface and to help them solve it. Our target groups are the state, the employers and the people themselves and the families that have one member with intellectual disability who should use or uses his employment right. It’s positive that the things started opening and every person should state from his point of view the irregularities or weak points of the Law on employing invalid people and its functioning in our country. The campaign was covered not only on state level, but also our local organizations organized their activities” – points out Dimoska. In the campaign it’s asked that the right for choosing employment of the people with intellectual disability to be supported by the state, with an obligation of strengthening the mechanism for following and control of the relation of the employers towards the employees with intellectual disability. “Poraka” asks the citizens to see and accept the rights of the people with intellectual disability, the employers to improve the approach and the attitudes towards this kind of employees, and the decision makers to take initiatives for changing the legislation and the policy, providing proper realization of the right for employing people with intellectual disability in R Macedonia.

Within the campaign “What’s happening with my rights” there’s also a need for proper following of the Manual for evaluation of the specific needs of people with disabilities in the physical and mental development. “There are cases where in the official documents of the Bureau for mental health for evaluating the specific needs to be written that a certain person has educational state of neglect, or is a border case, after which the Employment bureau won’t accept the person as a person with intellectual disability and won’t be able to get employed on the basis given in the Law on employing invalid people. That’s why we ask for a proper application of the Manual, of the article 10 in it, and the educational state of neglect and border case, or everything else that’s not included in the Manual, shouldn’t be included in the official document” – says Vlado Krstovski, explaining one of the nine conclusions, taken to the proper institutions. Also the protective working associations are one of the target groups in the campaign, because of creating a positive change and providing the right for employment of the people with intellectual disability in those associations to be applied regularly. Among the positive examples “Poraka” points out the Protective association for employing disabled people for services “Eco service” Skopje, because there, they point out, people are engaged as they should be, they do the job they are trained to do and it suits them and they get a proper salary. Dragan Ruzonjic, lawyer in “Eco-service” where eight disabled people are permanently employed, among which are also people with intellectual disability, supports the campaign “What’s happening with my rights” and thinks that the state must be more efficient in fulfilling its obligations towards the people, but also towards the protective association. “We haven’t received the means that we deserve from the Employment agency for two years, even though we submitted the necessary request. The employees are full time workers, they work on putting instructions for using drugs, they stick declarations, and for that work they get 8,200 denars salary and are well adjusted to the surrounding. We are working for the company “Zegin” and we are formed on their initiative. We regularly get the means for the service that we are doing and I think that it’s very important behind the work of protective associations to have a strong company. The state should have a bigger respect towards the people with physical and intellectual disability, to stimulate the associations for their bigger employment, but also to facilitate the complex bureaucratic procedures and the implementation of the legal rights” – says Ruzonjic.

With the campaign “What’s happening with my rights” there’s also a need of defining the quotas of employing people with intellectual disability on the open market. The quota system would provide for the people with intellectual disability to be included everywhere, in all working organizations, firms. “The state with the processes of eurointegration should think about one new step” – they say in “Poraka”.

Katerina Bogoeva

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