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Home-Based Care for the Disabled

Home-Based Care for the Disabled
Home-Based Care for the Disabled

A comprehensive program for people with disabilities was approved last week by the government and it is hoped that with proper funding and support of the civil society, the quality of services to the disabled will be enhanced, said Hossein Nahvinezhad, deputy of rehabilitation at the State Welfare Organization (SWO).

Long-term care for the physically challenged at care centers will lower the quality of their lives, and being confined to their homes “is also difficult due to the economic problems families are grappling with nowadays,” he said.

Supporting the disabled is a key policy of the SWO and a new approach to rehabilitation “in accordance with our Islamic and national culture” emphasizes community care rather than institutional care. It is against human dignity to separate the differently-abled from their family and the community, he said, ISNA reports.

Nahvinezhad said government should implement plans to support families with disabled members. This can be done through education and awareness to interact and communicate properly with disabled people, provide more facilities, like better services and rehabilitation aids, and funding, as home care is costly and a burden on families.

In the past decade, the SWO has implemented a home-based rehabilitation scheme by establishing mobile teams to pay visits to the disabled at their homes, and also diverting 60% of the subsidies allocated to care centers, to families who provide home care to their disabled members, he said. The SWO will reinforce institutionalization of home-based rehabilitation.

Financialtribune.com