Lietuvoje dabar vykstanti pertvarka yra didelis iššūkis sovietmečiu sukurtai ir iki šiol veikiančiai stacionarios globos sistemai. Nepaisant kritikos dėl žmogaus teisių pažeidimų ir neracionalaus išteklių naudojimo, stacionarios globos paslaugos dažniausiai yra vienintelė alternatyva ilgalaikės globos reikalingiems psichosocialinę negalią ar intelekto sutrikimą turintiems asmenims. Pasitelkus institucionalizmo teoriją, straipsnyje nagrinėjamas sistemos pasipriešinimas pokyčiams ir daromos išvados, kad globos įstaigos siekia išlaikyti turimą galią ir šiam tikslui pasitelkia finansinius, žmogiškuosius ir techninius išteklius, konjunktūrinius ryšius. Taip pat matomas ydingas globos įstaigų funkcionavimo ratas: būtinybė izoliuoti negalią turinčius asmenis argumentuojama jų nesavarankiškumu ir tolerancijos stoka visuomenėje, kartu pačių įstaigų veikla atskiria globos reikalingus asmenis ir slopina jų savarankiškumą.
The deinstitutionalization of social care in Lithuania started in 2012 after the adoption of the strategic guidelines by the Ministry of Social Security and Labour. The goal of this reform was to improve the care conditions and introduce new community-based services for persons with disabilities. Almost ten years of the reform resulted in only five percent of persons with disabilities who moved to community settings, mainly group-living homes. The slow-motion of the reform, as well as the tensions in the communities, suggests the need for a thorough analysis of the process of deinstitutionalization and its improvement.
Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory is applied as a conceptual and methodological tool for understanding the roles of deinstitutionalization agents at different levels, including the Ministry of Social Security and Labour, municipalities, non-governmental organizations, social care institutions, and local communities. All of these agents are involved and diversely interact among themselves during the transformation process of the social care system. The ecological theory provides the necessary integrated approach to the analysis of the process of deinstitutionalization of the social care system at the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macro levels.
Deinstitutionalization and the trajectories of its participants reveal resilient connections with different fields of the ecological system and show that different system components not only represent different systems but become microsystems themselves that affect all elements in the ecological system.
The complexity of environmental systems constitutes the basis of ecological systems theory. It serves as a lens to guide the analysis of the transformation of a particular person’s life in the context of deinstitutionalization. Herewith, it is an appropriate tool for understanding the impact of deinstitutionalization on specific local communities.
In the post-socialist region, both disability NGOs and disability research have been hostages of the medical model. The last decades mark the end of this dependence, however, a question remains over whether disability activism and research have become allies, implementing human rights-based disability policy. The goal of this paper is to reveal the relationship between academic disability research and disability activism and their influence on disability policy in the post-socialist region. The objectives of the research are to analyze the peculiarities of academic disability discourse and disability activism, their intersection points as well as their actual impact on disability policy. As a reference point for this analysis, we will take the trends of disability discourse and the rise of disability activism in the Global North countries. Thus, this paper contributes to the „careful dialogue" (Rassel, Iarskaia-Smirnova, 2013) between the post-socialist and Western understandings of disability. Authors overview the emergence of civil society and disability activism in post-socialist countries, discuss the changing role of researchers in the disability field, present and compare findings from experts' research, and quantitative content analysis of disability-related academic texts.
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