P.S. for post-Soviet: A glimpse to a life of persons with intellectual disabilities

2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (3) ◽  
pp. 235-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
Violeta Gevorgianiene ◽  
Egle Sumskiene

This article focuses on the situation of persons with intellectual disabilities in the developing post-Soviet countries and aims to review the extent to which services offered to them promote values of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and empower these persons to lead fulfilling lives. Interviews with experts revealed that post-Soviet countries form a peculiar cluster among other developing countries, which has specific attributes. First of all, there prevails a strong stigmatization, which consequently leads to the predominant silent mandate to isolate those with intellectual disabilities in big residential care institutions. Second, the governments’ lack political will to start the reforms and initiatives of nongovernmental organizations which they do not sustain (or, assumingly, are even suppressed). As a result, persons with intellectual disabilities find themselves stuck between the Soviet tradition of exclusion and simulated superficial reforms.

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 ◽  
pp. 77 ◽  
Author(s):  
María Beatriz Duarte-Gómez ◽  
Silvia Magali Cuadra-Hernández ◽  
Myriam Ruiz-Rodríguez ◽  
Armando Arredondo ◽  
Jesús David Cortés-GilI

OBJECTIVE: To analyze the impacts of the care to the population displaced by violence on the health system and the challenges that this entails. METHODS: This is a narrative review of the national and international literature in PubMed, SciELO, WHO/PAHO, and Bireme. Inclusion criteria were date of publication ( from 2000), relation with the subject, and language (Spanish or English). We found 292 documents, of which 91 met the inclusion criteria. RESULTS: The main challenges are the intersectoral, participatory, and integral approach (with emphasis on mental health and sexual and reproductive health), ensured accessibility to health services, the need for a reliable registration and information system of the population displaced by violence and its characteristics, and the addressing of the biopsychosocial problems of the different groups, especially women, persons with disabilities or infectious diseases, adolescents, children, ethnic minorities, older adults and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual, and intersexual population. CONCLUSIONS: The lack of political will to accept and see the internal displacement by violence and its importance as a humanitarian and public health problem is an obstacle to the adequate and timely care of the population displaced by violence in Mexico.


2022 ◽  
Vol 121 (831) ◽  
pp. 30-35
Author(s):  
Chester A. Finn ◽  
Matthew S. Smith ◽  
Michael Ashley Stein

Paternalistic attitudes about what is in the interests of a person with an intellectual disability have long led to abuses, and are embedded in the guardianship laws still in place in most countries. Self-advocates, who identify as people with intellectual or other disabilities and are committed to demanding their rights and educating others about them, are calling for a new approach. They have found support for reforms in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, adopted by the United Nations in 2006 and since acceded to by 182 countries. By supporting the fundamental right of those with disabilities to make decisions, it has enabled disability rights advocates to successfully challenge legal capacity restrictions and push for “supported decision-making.”


2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (4) ◽  
pp. 818-839 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eszter Varsa

This article discusses the role of child protection and residential care institutions in mediating the tension between women’s productive and reproductive responsibilities in early state socialist Hungary. At a time when increasing numbers of women entered paid work in the framework of catch-up industrialization but the socialization of care work was inadequate, these institutions substituted for missing public child care services. Relying on not only policy documents but more than six hundred children’s case files, including Romani children’s files, from three different locations in Hungary as well as interviews with former children’s home residents and personnel, the article examines the regulatory framework in which child protection institutions and caseworkers operated. It points to the differentiated forms of pressure these institutions exercised on Romani and non-Romani mothers to enter paid work between the late 1940s and the early 1950s from the intersectional perspective of gender and ethnicity. Showing that prejudice against “Gypsies” as work-shy persisted in child protection work across the systemic divide of the late 1940s, the article contributes to scholarship on state socialism and Stalinism that emphasizes the role of historical continuities. At the same time, reflecting on parental invention in using child protection as a form of child care, the article also complicates a simplistic social control approach to residential care institutions in Stalinist Hungary.


2020 ◽  
Vol 11 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bürgin ◽  
Nina Kind ◽  
Martin Schröder ◽  
Vera Clemens ◽  
Jörg M. Fegert ◽  
...  

Background: Professional caregivers in youth residential care institutions experience frequent verbal and physical aggression as well as multiple stressors as part of their everyday work, leading to high levels of burnout and staff turnover. Resilience might buffer against psychophysiological stress response and therefore be crucial for well-being in professional caregivers.Objectives: We aimed to investigate if measures related to resilience [sense of coherence (SoC), self-efficacy and self-care] and attachment security of caregivers were cross-sectionally associated with stress markers in hair samples [cortisol and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA)].Method: Participants (n = 134; 64.2% women) reported on individual resilience measures and provided hair samples for cortisol and DHEA assays. Attachment was assessed in a subsample using the Adult Attachment Projective Picture System (AAP, n = 69). Linear regression models were fitted to estimate the association between resilience measures and the Cortisol:DHEA ratio, cortisol and DHEA, controlling for gender and age.Results: SoC was associated with a lower Cortisol:DHEA ratio (β = −0.36, p < 0.001), driven by a positive association between SoC and DHEA levels (β = 0.28, p = 0.002). Self-care was also associated with lower Cortisol:DHEA ratios (β = −0.24, p = 0.005), due to self-care being associated with higher DHEA (β = 0.21, p = 0.016). HPA-axis measures were not associated with self-efficacy nor with attachment patterns in a subsample.Conclusions: Our findings imply that youth residential care institutions might benefit from programs focusing on enhancing SoC and self-care practices. Fostering a meaningful, comprehensible and manageable professional climate in caregiving environments and implementing self-care in routine practices might enhance not only well-being but also physical health of professional caregivers and in this way buffer adverse health effects of chronic stressors.


2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Julia Kakoullis

AbstractIn its concluding observations for Cyprus, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) Committee stated that it ‘is concerned about the insufficiency of legal provisions and accessible mechanisms to detect, report, prevent and combat all forms of violence’.1This paper focuses on the independent monitoring obligation Article 16(3) CRPD places on states parties, and discusses the implications of the insufficient implementation of Article 16(3) as it affects adults with intellectual disabilities in Cyprus. It examines the existing monitoring frameworks, explains why they do not meet with Article 16(3) CRPD requirements and explores the relationship of the national human rights institutions (NHRIs) with Article 16(3). This paper enables understanding as to how, despite pre-existing monitoring frameworks in place, no independent monitoring action has been taken since the ratification of the CRPD. It argues that there is an immediate need for measures to achieve the implementation of Article 16(3) and makes recommendations for Cyprus and other states parties.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. e0195515 ◽  
Author(s):  
Beth L. Rubenstein ◽  
Matthew MacFarlane ◽  
Celina Jensen ◽  
Lindsay Stark

Author(s):  
Olha A. Vovchenko

The article outlines the psychological features of the age period, which is determined by the scientific category as an “adolescent crisis”. The problem of the adolescent crisis has been revealed in people with intellectual disabilities. The importance and relevance of the study is revealed first, due to the difficulties of adolescence: its dynamism, ambiguity, lack of emotional stability of the individual; secondly, due to the specifics of personality formation with intellectual disabilities; thirdly, the need to further develop effective psychological support for adolescents with intellectual disabilities. The aim of the article was to study and experimentally test the specifics of the emotional crisis of adolescence in people with intellectual disabilities. The purpose was provided by solving the following tasks: stating the peculiarities of the adolescent crisis in people with intellectual disabilities; determining the state of formation of “I-concept” and “self-image” of adolescents with intellectual disabilities; establishing the specifics of behavioral reactions and interaction of the adolescent with others (peers, the elderly) in conditions of experiencing an age crisis. Moreover, the author conducted a psychological testing procedure to study the peculiarities of the formation of the personality of a teenager with intellectual disabilities during the age crisis (adolescent crisis). M. Kuhn’s psychological testing method “Who am I?”, T. Leary’s method of diagnostics of interpersonal relations were used; conversations, observations. The purpose of using these techniques was to determine the self-image, self-presentation, self-perception and self-esteem of adolescents with intellectual disabilities. According to the results of the study, it was found that adolescents with intellectual disabilities have a process of self-knowledge and understanding of their own “I”, internal mental acts and states are underdeveloped or absent. This complicates the process of experiencing an adolescent’s crisis. As evidenced by the low level of recognition and differentiation of emotions, emotional awareness, management of their own emotions. Also critical are difficulties with the adequate expression of emotions in accordance with the situation that determines them, in particular with the manifestation and control of anger, rage, aggression and other. The further directions of research of formation of the person with infringements of intellectual development in adolescent age are outlined.


Author(s):  
Branislav Simonović ◽  

International anti-corruption conventions are of great importance for building universal standards aimed at combating corruption. Despite the fact that most countries have ratified regional anti-corruption conventions and the universal - UN Convention against Corruption, the implementation of conventions in developing countries is not at a satisfactory level. One of the biggest challenges is the lack of political will to fight corruption. This paper analyzes some systemic weaknesses of the United Nations Convention against Corruption regarding ambiguity, vagueness and optionality in the application of some norms of the convention, as well as weaknesses in the system of monitoring the implementation of the convention, which do not contribute to improving political will to fight corruption.


Author(s):  
Yasin Olum

Decentralisation has been implemented and is being implemented in many developing countries without much success. Although several unique factors inhibit the implementation of decentralisation in individual countries, the paper argues that there are six pre-conditions that these countries should fulfill before decentralisation can be successfully implemented. These preconditions are: institutional mechanisms; creation of spaces for participation; political will and civil will; capacity development at the local level; careful implementation; and democratic governance.


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