A person with disabilities is first of all a person with abilities and the creation of a favorable environment for this to develop the personality is the guarantee of personal success and of the success of the community of which such persons form part. Alongside other series that look at 2018 in retrospect, IPN comes with a series of articles about people who live with a disability and about organizations that promote the rights of these people..
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In the Republic of Moldova, the autistic children are kept far from society because their skills to communicate with mates are different. They are not always understood and are not always accepted by those around. The problem resides in the late diagnostication of these children that can influence a lot the appropriate integration of children with such disorders. The parents, not the state intervened to solve this problem. These were the first to create organizations and develop services and became thus the advocates of their children. A.O. “SOS Autism” is such an organization. This weekly registers new applications to enroll autistic children at therapy and socialization sessions. The association’s executive director Aliona Dumitraș said that until this year there was no institution in Moldova that would have provided medical-social services intended for autistic children. The access to medical-psychosocial rehabilitation of these children was thus limited.
A.O. “SOS Autism” and A.O. “ADRA Moldova” initiated the project “Assistance for children with autism spectrum disorders and other genetic disorders in the Republic of Moldova, 2018-2021”. The project aims to open and run a specialized intervention center for children and adults with autism spectrum disorders. At this center, the about 346 officially registered autistic children are offered services to realize their physical, cognitive and communicative development potential,” explained Aliona Dumitraș.
This year the behavioral therapies in the Republic of Moldova have been accredited and introduced as treatment methods in the National Clinical Protocol on autism. “We wanted, but didn’t manage to have the behavioral therapies funded through the National Health Insurance Company. The therapies are very costly and last long. This is extraordinary financial pressure on the parents. Furthermore, now only the parents who afford to pay these charges can help the kids. The children whose parents have lower incomes remain outside,” stated Aliona Dumitraș. Also, the problem of support teachers in schools hasn’t been yet solved. “We now have only one support teacher for five serious cases or ten less severe cases. The autistic children need to be accompanied 24 hours of 24 and we thus set the goal of ensuring at least one support teacher for two children with autism next year. In secondary education, something is yet done for the autistic children, while in primary education (kindergartens) nothing is done. We aim to cover this niche too next year.”
A guidebook is to be published in the nearest future. “The guidebook will be the first and the only one of the kind for parents and caregivers of children with autism and rare genetic diseases, with pieces of advice and realities from the Republic of Moldova. Also, an older objective that is yet primordial for us is to purchase autism diagnosis and assessment tests that do not exist in Moldova and to provide the therapists, supervisors and other specialists of responsible state institutions, such as the Psychiatric Hospitals of Chisinau and Balti, with such tests,” noted Aliona Dumitraș.
Ion Ciobanu, IPN
