The Fight For Right organization, which protects the rights of people with disabilities, launched a new portal called DI UKRAINE aimed at promoting deinstitutionalization in Ukraine. This is reported by Espresso. The purpose of the portal is to inform about the importance of abandoning institutional facilities, such as boarding schools and boarding houses, where the rights of people with disabilities, the elderly, people with mental disorders, dementia, as well as children deprived of parental care are violated.
According to Fight For Right activists, institutions of this type are a remnant of the Soviet system, and nowadays all people should be able to live in families and communities, not in conditions of isolation and segregation. The head of the organization Yuliya Sachuk emphasized that the goal of deinstitutionalization is to create conditions for the independent life of every person with a disability.
Project assistant Khrystyna Styganets added that she joined Fight For Right with the desire to protect the right to dreams and freedom of choice. She also emphasized the importance of spreading information about the negative aspects of institutional facilities, as well as collecting stories of people who have personal experience of living in such facilities.
To achieve deinstitutionalization, it is necessary to develop support services at the community level, provide affordable housing and create conditions for families raising people with disabilities. It also involves the creation of jobs and opportunities for the active participation of people with disabilities in community life, which helps to overcome their isolation.
Styganets added that people with disabilities have a huge potential for the economic development of the country. However, living in institutional facilities, they cannot implement it. She emphasized that many people with disabilities are able to work and make a significant contribution to society, provided that appropriate conditions are created for them.
