- The topic of people with intellectual disabilities and disabilities in general needs more government involvement. The group of people with intellectual disabilities has so far been on the fringes of the margins," Lukasz Krasoń, government plenipotentiary for people with disabilities, secretary of state at the Ministry of Family and Social Policy, told a joint meeting of the parliamentary team for people with disabilities and the parliamentary group for autism. Participants in the meeting also paid a lot of attention to the challenges of revamping the disability adjudication system.
People with intellectual disabilities need special support. What is needed is the involvement of the authorities
Published Feb. 7, 2024 14:33
fot. Piotr Wójcik
- One of the more urgent things that will be implemented is supported employment. We have been fighting for it for many years. It will finally become a reality. In the coming weeks, a fiche will be created and we will start implementing projects for which we have money from the European Union. We will implement the assumptions, unlike what happened in recent years," declared Lukas Krasoon.
Malgorzata Rybicka of the AUTYZM-POLAND Covenant highlighted the needs for housing and daytime support.
- It is about small homes with individual community support for adults with autism. A law on assisted housing is essential. The second priority is to introduce adequate day support arrangements for adults with autism and intellectual disabilities. Current Community Self-Help Homes completely fail to meet these standards and do not accommodate people with autism and intellectual disabilities. In addition, it is necessary to make funding of other forms of support by PFRON more flexible," Malgorzata Rybicka mentioned.
Much attention was paid during the meeting to the challenges of disability adjudication. Participants highlighted, among other things, the problem that it is now very often the case that the degree of disability of a person with autism is adjudicated by, for example, an ophthalmology specialist.
- Ruling lies at the foundation of many of the problems we have today. Everyone is ruling in their own way. All of this today is unreadable. However, there is light at the end of the tunnel. The new ruling was written into the coalition agreement. We don't have a hegemon that will arbitrarily say which MP should do what. We have a team and several groupings that have given a very strong signal that this topic is very important. We have very large funds from the European Union that will come to us. These are hundreds of millions of zlotys that will be able to be used for a new system of jurisprudence. It can't be that someone in several different places has to prove the same thing, and in the end it will turn out that different adjudicators will give different decisions. This probably won't change in a while, but certainly in this term, and not later, but sooner," Minister Lukasz Krasoń announced.
The chairman of the Parliamentary Group on Autism, MP Jacek Karnowski, drew attention to the needs related to the availability of nursing benefits. In Sopot, of which he was mayor until recently, they are also paid to people who acquired disabilities in adulthood. Against this background, a dispute arose between the city government and the Pomeranian governor. At the time, the issue in question was the issuance of 73 decisions to grant nursing benefits to caregivers of people with disabilities. The governor demanded that the budget return the amount resulting from the benefits paid.
- We should level this issue, especially since the Constitutional Court has ruled unconstitutional the provisions differentiating access to such a benefit. The nursing benefit should be paid to everyone, regardless of when this disability was diagnosed," said MP Jacek Karnowski.
Participants in the committee meeting pointed out the need for not only systemic solutions, but also educational activities, which should be implemented not only at the government level, but also at the local government level.
