Re-institutionalising de-institutionalisation

Brussels, 14th November 2012

Kapka Panayotova, ENIL

RE-INSTITUTIONALISING DE-INSTITUTIONALISATION

We wanted the best, you know the rest

Victor Chernomyrdin, Prime Minister of the Russian Federation, 6th August 1993

SMALL GROUP HOME CASE STUDY

- Qualitative research (case study)- 13 in-depth interviews: 4 young disabled

adults from the SGH, 4 NGO experts, one developer, a private company consultant, a construction worker, deputy mayor, social worker.

- Not representative but true!

METHODOLOGY

‘I felt better in the large place. When they got me here, I couldn’t stop crying for a week.’

‘The furniture is new, everything is brand new and clean, but it was better before... I don’t know why, I had everything there… More people around.’

‘I miss the social institution. If I could choose I would have stayed there and never moved here.’

RESIDENTS

‘The building is OK but the relationships are lousy… I mean between us and the staff.’

‘…it was better in the previous place because each room had a bathroom. Here we have two toilets altogether, one of which is for the staff only. When someone gets into the other one, you must wait. We are ten people for God’s sake…’

RESIDENTS

‘They certainly don’t like it, because they were used to do nothing all day long and have somebody else clean for them, do the cooking, run around. They just kept screaming and yelling at the staff: “you are paid to clean and you will do that”. Now they have to do the cleaning, cooking, shopping. This is the point to make them look after themselves, start independent living. It’s obvious they wouldn’t like it at the beginning...’

STAFF

‘The abbreviation means Family-type Accommodation Centre but we see more often the Same-type Accommodation Centres – nothing is changed when take the children from a large building and move them to a smaller one.’

‘…instead of ‘resident care’ she used to say ‘resistant care’. We were laughing then… She turned out right – the service seems to be resistant to any influence and nothing can change by moving them from the old institution to the brand new Centre.’

EXPERTS

‘Look, I’m not greedy – my net profit is about 40 to 50% of the project value. I know however – from friends in the business whom I know personally – that the net profit – after all costs and bribes are being paid – is somewhere around 70%. You see, prices in large cities and smaller villages are different, aren’t they?’

DEVELOPERS

- Regional Development Programme – capital costs – €16 mln. for 60 projects

- Human Resources Development – soft measures costs – €25 mln.

- Rural Development Programme - €9 mln.

FUNDING

‘…business and charities are so much interwoven… a lot of purely commercial entities working for profit pretend to be charities or social service providers in order to avoid the market competition…’

There is a lot of construction business in this, meaning there is a lot of money and interests… If there were no building projects nothing would have happened.

VESTED INTERESTS

EVERYBODY IS HAPPY: - Contractors make money;

- Local authorities attract investments;- Former institutions’ staff keep their jobs and

work in newer facilities with less residents; - Service providers;

- National government reports results in the process of DI and in the absorption of EU

funds.

VESTED INTERESTS

… THE DISABLED PEOPLE AND THE CHILDREN WHOSE VOICES ARE TOO WEAK TO

BE HEARD

EXCEPT FOR…