Calls for Better Provision for Georgia's Disabled Children

Parents of disabled children in Georgia accuse their government of doing too little to help them, and say the state support they do get is far from adequate.

Karina, who asked for her surname to be withheld, is a single mother raising her five-year-old son Giorgi, who suffers from infantile cerebral paralysis as a result of an injury suffered at birth.

As there are no special facilities available, she takes Georgi to a standard kindergarten and stays there all day with him.

Karina says the 80 laris, under 50 US dollars, she gets in monthly state benefits covers only about one-third of the cost of her son’s care.

“Giorgi needs a massage every day, plus various devices essential to his survival, which are very expensive and hard to obtain,” she said. “A 20-day course of massage, speech therapy and psychotherapy at the children’s hospital in Dogomi costs 154 laris. That’s a quarter of the total cost – the rest is covered by the state. But it only funds three courses a year, and that’s nowhere near enough.”

“How can I care for this child on the 80 laris I get?” she asked. “Everything costs money. Even a simple referral from a doctor costs 30 laris.”

Like others whose condition is chronic, Giorgi still has to be seen by a medical commission every two years so that his disabled status is confirmed.

“As a mother, of course I hope and believe my son will improve. But why do doctors who are 100 per cent sure that his condition is untreatable make us go before this commission every two years?” Karina asked.

Irina Inasaridze, head of the non-government Anika Centre for Independent Life, said these periodic examinations were still a prerequisite to the continuation of state benefits.

“I think it’s a discriminatory system,” she added. “If a child has Down’s syndrome, for example, it will only be classed as disabled at the age of five. That’s completely wrong. Diagnosis is made immediately at birth, but the parents get no financial help until the child is five.”

Inasaridze said the benefits system should be based on individual need rather than formal classification, but added that officials had ruled this out as too costly.

Some 150,000 people are officially registered disabled in Georgia, but there are no disaggregated figures for disabled children.

Amiran Dateshidze, head of the social security department at the Georgian health ministry said the disabled benefits system would be improved rather than changed.

One measure, he said, might be to extend state-funded health insurance to all disabled children, rather than just those falling into certain categories. (See Georgian Healthcare Fails Low-Income Groups on this scheme.)

“At present, a significant proportion of children receive insurance as members of vulnerable families. All children living in state institutions also receive insurance,” Dateshidze explained.

UNICEF, the United Nations’ children’s agency, published a report in November last year calling on Georgia to do more for children with disabilities.

“There is an urgent need to redouble efforts to reach families caring for children with disabilities, prevent abandonment and reduce stigma,” it said. The UNICEF recommendations included providing more day-care centres, ensuring that all children’s families received support whatever their incomes, and registering children as disabled from a young age.

As well as medical care, experts are calling for better educational provision for the disabled.

Georgia’s human rights ombudsman has called for education legislation to be changed to make all schools accessible to children with disabilities.

Ana Arganashvili, a spokesman for the ombudsman’s office, said much remained to be done to improve access.

“The situation cannot change overnight, of course. At this point, there are no more than 20 schools across Georgia that are adapted for disabled children. But even they face many problems – last year, children were unable to get to school on some days because there was no petrol for their bus.”

Lia Kilasonia is the teacher in charge of the 25 disabled children who attend School No. 21 in the capital Tbilisi, is one of the first mainstream facilities to accept children regardless of disability.

Kilasonia says the fact that specialist teachers like her are not paid any more than the standard salary is a deterrent to others.

“The result is that young people aren’t motivated to work as teachers for disabled children, so Georgia is short of qualified staff. We’re also in need of special books,” she said.

Going on to further education presents nearly insurmountable challenges.

“If it weren’t for the help I got from friends and, I would never have completed my education,” Rati Ionatamishvili, a campaigner for the disabled, said of his own university experience. “Getting a higher education is an unrealistic goal for anyone with a disability. I won’t deny that the education law states that everyone has equal rights to an education. But if institutions lack the proper facilities, they automatically exclude anyone who is disabled.”

Edita Badasyan works for Ekho Kavkaza radio.