Rules shut people with disabilities out of day centres

People with disabilities who live outside their family homes with staff support are losing access to day-centre activities, LRT reported. Experts say the arrangement leaves them confined to one place without suitable activities, resembling life under permanent quarantine conditions.

Under ministry rules, people who live separately from their families in shared-living or other homes with staff assistance cannot attend a day centre. Otherwise, they would receive two social care services: long-term social care at home, which provides daily assistance, and day social care through the day centre.

The restrictions affect residents of the first homes established by the Nepatogūs Foundation, a project created for people with severe complex disabilities. The foundation was set up by four mothers whose children have such disabilities after they grew tired of waiting for state assistance.

The homes opened last year and allow the residents to live as independently as possible with staff support. Previously, the young people spent their days at a day centre, where they took part in various activities. After moving into the new homes, they continued receiving day-centre services, but from next year they will no longer be allowed to attend.

The shared-living homes had been granted an exception, but the day centre will close its doors to their residents from next year. This will also affect Aušra, the daughter of Nepatogūs head Henrikа Varnienė.

Varnienė told LRT that abruptly ending the activity service would come as a shock to the residents.

“This regulation, which means that people can no longer receive two care services, affects more than just us. Residents of care homes would sometimes also go to day centres. Now they can no longer go there. Nobody offers these residents alternatives; people are confined to one place. This is terrible,” Varnienė said.

She added that the situation was particularly difficult for people who communicate with others but would now spend the entire day at home without activities or any alternative support.

Experts say every person has the right to participate in activities and that this right must be guaranteed. Varnienė plans to establish a day centre after creating homes for her daughter and other young people, although residents receiving care at home will not officially be able to attend it.

She hopes they could at least spend short periods there with their own staff members. In that case, she said, the day centre would not use its employees’ resources for those residents.

Ramunė Lebedytė Undzėnienė, head of the Viltis association for the care of people with intellectual disabilities, said it was very harmful that people with disabilities living in shared homes or larger institutions could not receive activity services.