This also relates to the necessity to employ additional staff (masseur, physical therapist etc.). The extent of help will be increasing as project participants are approaching their senior age.

 

3. SOCIAL ASPECT, GIVING UP INSTITUTIONAL CARE

 

               Staying in inpatient long-term care centers means getting excluded from the society and living in the surroundings of exclusion, poverty and inequality in terms of the access to health care, social services as well as life chances. As far as we are concerned, it is also relevant to support the tendency to personalize assistance which can serve the fulfillment of real and not alleged needs.

In order to provide the people in need with a possibility of living an independent life and participating in social life, it is necessary to give up the idea of institutional help for family and communal care system, therefore, our project displays the qualities of a family home.

 

4. GENERAL ASSUMPTION:

 

               The core of the concept: to create a complex of apartments with the equipment enabling living a professional, social and cultural life by people with motor disabilities. Only the idea of deinstitutionalization of care can ensure an independent life and self-fulfillment of motorically impaired seniors. Inpatient long-term care centers exclude those members from our society and make it impossible for them to fully and actively enjoy their life, being doomed to humiliation and depriving them of dignity.

While developing the project special focus was put on the fact that each person in need should be engaged in taking decisions related to care or support and be able to have the greatest possible control over their life.

The basis of the innovative programme supporting physically disabled people approaching senior age is:

• developing grassroots initiatives among this part of the society which is considered passive and incapable of self-functioning,

• stopping the process of constant marginalization of this social group,

• facilitating people experiencing physical difficulties participation in professional, cultural and social life. The target group of the programme encompasses people with a considerable level of physical disability with intellectual and professional potential,

•”escaping” the institution, center,

• solving problems appearing more and more frequently in an aging society (anonymity, loneliness, need for support, no activity, depression)

 

5. OBJECTIVES:

 

• Preventing institutionalization and implementing deinstitutionalization (fulfilling the provisions of art. 19 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities – see above),

• rationalization of costs and organization of assistive services, transport, shopping, dealing with official businesses, doctor’s appointments etc. through close neighbourhood,

• providing personalized care and support, social inclusion and respecting the rights of the beneficiaries of the services.

The objective of this project is to ensure personalized care and support, social inclusion and to respect the rights of the beneficiaries of the services. While developing the project special focus was put on the fact that each person in need should be engaged in taking decisions related to care or support and be able to have the greatest possible control over their life.

The objective of our solution is providing an independent life, without so-called incapacitation, which we actually deal with in care institutions.

 

6. THE TERM 'INDEPENDENT LIFE’ WITH REGARD TO THE SUBJECTS OF THE PROJECT

 

The term „independent life” with regard to the disabled and the elderly is frequently interchangeably used with the term “life within a society”. It does not stand for “taking activities on our own” or “being self-sufficient”. An independent life is bound to the ability to make choices and take decisions regarding the place of residence, the choice of apartment mates and organization of everyday life. This requires:

• availability of architecture,

• availability of transportation,

• availability of technical equipment,

• possible access to information and communication,

• access to personal help and

• access to services provided by local communities.

 

7. SOCIAL BENEFITS FROM THE PROJECT

 

               On account of an accelerated aging process of the society, the programme will enable the disabled (seniors) to live a full and active life relieving social welfare, local governments and families, as well as enable them to live in an effective way.

The programme will enable them to share an apartment, to work, fulfill their plans and be in touch with the local community as well as prevent depression and isolation. This will facilitate breaking the stereotype of “the invalid” having a demanding attitude towards life and will prove that physical constraints and age do not constitute a reason to treat people instrumentally through taking over control over them. Creating a community by the interested themselves will be an instrument towards achieving this objective, which will be a chance for these people to live a decent, socially active life:

• protecting them from the nightmare of living in an institution which is not able to provide the residents with the minimum level of privacy, respect and dignity from various reasons,

• enabling them to live their life till reaching an advanced old age being surrounded by nice, helpful and close people, in apartments adjusted to their individual needs (lifts, doors and windows opened by voice, adjustable washbasins etc.),

• slowing down the aging process through living an active life,

• creating new standards in the field of supporting the physically disabled - the programme is created by the disabled,

• making it possible to support and create interpersonal relationships between the residents and the community through working together, meeting, taking educational measures and exchanging experiences as well as supporting one another in difficult situations, depression, disease.

 

8. WHAT DO WE WANT? WHAT DO WE WANT TO PREVENT FROM HAPPENING?

 

               We want to be a part of the society as long as it is possible – at best till the end of our lives. We do not want to be doomed to vegetation in an institutional health care center where neither a decent life can be provided, nor the potential of abilities and talents can be noticed. We will be as if incapacitated and dependent on the time of the day and duty hours of the personnel, imposed time of getting up, going to sleep and eating.

We want to prevent (which in our case is unavoidable) being shut in a nursing home (DPS) or in a health care center (ZOL). A day of a resident: 6-7 a.m. – getting up, 1 p.m. – dinner, 6 p.m. – supper, 7 p.m. – going to sleep with diapers on for the peace and quiet of the personnel as well as for the sake of saving – in respect of the lack of care personnel. Rooms for many people shared with random roommates, impossibility of taking your own furniture or equipment with you – even the one facilitating the job of the personnel, i.e. costly ceiling lifts, elevated lifts, no room for electric wheelchair as an alternative to moving.

We do not want anyone to take decisions about our life, the kind of help we need, what we are supposed to do and when, who will be helping us. We want to have a say in questions regarding our future! We do not want anyone to be enjoying financial profits from our disability! The right to take decisions about our lives is granted to us on the strength of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, is it really so?