In this interview Judith Klein, the director of the Open Society Mental Health Initiative, discusses a 5-year collaboration with the Croatian government to transition people with disabilities from two major long-stay residential facilities—or institutions—to community-based housing and support.

Question: Until recently, what has life been like for Croatians with disabilities?

In Croatia, as elsewhere, people with intellectual disabilities have traditionally been institutionalized. Though institutions may have had the benevolent intention of rehabilitating people so they could go back home, they have failed. They became warehouses for human beings, often providing fertile ground for neglect and abuse.

As in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe, life for Croatians with disabilities meant being relegated for decades, often for life, in long-stay institutions, or stuck at home without adequate support.

As residents of these institutions move into supported housing in their communities, it means liberation from a lifetime of complete deprivation. It means choosing what to have for breakfast, going out, making friends. It means seeing people once branded as hopeless working with support in the open labor market; it means seeing people who never spoke in the institution singing in a choir. It means a normal life, the kind of life we all take for granted

Read the full interview here - http://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/voices/confinement-community-croatia?utm_source=health_A&utm_medium=email&utm_content=CeWgQVfswKgrlyo-rjcfc-VJXRbRGy06L889cApAI1iptmEUXUlMqbtD0A1ctFrQ06LCwVr8Ur35o1z2MxAeQQ&utm_campaign=health_A_071614

Interconnections e-mail consultancy to help you with the TAC approach

Having supported services in many countries since publishing books on the TAC approach, it is my experience that an on-going conversation by e-mail is a valid way to provide support. Two major elements in this are: 

1. Both the client and myself have time to consider issues properly in the conversation
2. The client is saved my travel and hotel costs. 

This service is available to service providers in any country (including the UK) and to groups of parents/carers or service users as follows: 

Support for service providers 

My support will help you move from the place where you are now towards the place where you want to get to. Depending on your situation, this can be a short journey or a longer journey. 

You will be charged in one or more blocks of £500. At the beginning of each block we will agree the outcomes you want to achieve and the topics we need to address together. The discussion will support you in planning and enacting change. The process can end when you feel it is appropriate. 

Please e-mail me with an outline of your needs. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

After that we will agree whether or not you want to proceed. 

Support for groups of parents/carers or groups of service users

Once I know what you are trying to achieve, we can agree a way forward. Costs will depend on what resources you have available with a maximum of £50 for each block of support. 

Please e-mail me with an outline of your needs. This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

After that we will agree whether or not you want to proceed.

Peter Limbrick

Interconnections

Herefordshire, HR3 5HH

Telephone (UK) 01497 831550

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Peter Limbrick welcomes examples from anywhere in the world of approaches to children's development and learning that attempt in some way to integrate such interventions as education, therapy, play, social skills, etc. 

Examples can include work towards offering a child a whole-child programme rather than a handful of separate discipline-specific programmes 

and/or 

work to reduce the number people working directly with a child – in an attempt to avoid overloading the child. 

Contributions will be disseminated on the www.teamaroundthechild.com website - with the contributor's permission. 

Peter Limbrick

TACinterconnections

E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.