OVERVIEW
Montenegro is one among two republics of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, with approximately 650.000 and Podgorica as the capital with 170.000 inhabitants.
Save the Children (SCF) began working with children with
disabilities and their carers in 1996.
The programme brings together a
range of projects throughout Montenegro addressing the rights of disabled
children (under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child), their families
and carers. The programme is characterised by:
1. Background
There is no precise data on children with special needs in Montenegro. However, according to the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, there are between 6,000 and 7,000 children with disabilities in the Republic. These are categorised by the Ministry under the following headings:
1. Blind children and children with problems with vision 2. Deaf children and children with hearing problems 3. Children with speech problems 4. Mentally retarded 5. Physically disabled 6. Attitude (or behavioural) problems and children with autism.
(Save the Children does not use the terms 'handicapped' and 'retarded', preferring 'disabled' or 'special needs children'. However, older terms, seen by many disabled people as derogatory, are still in use in Montenegro - as in other parts of Central and Eastern Europe - and cannot always be avoided.)
Only 10 per cent of children with disabilities receive any kind of professional treatment or attend school. Only those children with the mildest learning difficulties and a limited number of children with physical disabilities attend any form of schooling.
The percentage of disabled children in pre-school institutions is very low in Montenegro. Pre-school education is neither compulsory nor free until a child is aged 6, at which point pre-school is available in the afternoons for one year prior to the child's starting at primary school. For this reason almost 90% of children aged 6 are attending pre-schools for a year before school. Costs are met by the state in certain circumstances. The Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare covers the cost of pre-school education for poor families and families with disabled children, if they receive state allowances.
The difficulties parents face in bringing a disabled child to pre-school (and many parents are ashamed of having a disabled child) often outweigh any perceived advantage, even among well-off families. There is a single development group with six disabled children in a Podgorica kindergarten (which SCF supports). A few disabled children attend pre-school groups in special schools in Podgorica.
There are three special schools in Montenegro, for mildly mentally disabled children, for physically disabled children, and for deaf children and 22 special classes within mainstream primary schools (for 120 children - five or six in each class). Students are separated from mainstream classes.
Under the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare, there is also a special institution - at Komanski Most, near Podgorica - for some 130 severely disabled children and adults. It is in an extremely poor state of physical repair. The morale of the 20 professional staff and others who work in the institution is very low.
In Montenegro, there is a clear need to raise awareness about childhood disability among professional carers and in governmental and other agencies. There is a need to promote greater acceptance of disabled people - especially children - in society as a whole. And, above all, there is a need to empower disabled children and their carers to challenge accepted norms relating to disability and to play a greater part in their communities.
2. Key issues
Save the Children in Montenegro has decided to tackle a number of key issues for disabled children in Montenegro in accordance with Save the Children's own global disability strategy and the specific needs of the Republic.
3. Aims and objectives
The aims of the programme are:
Its objectives are:
4. Impact of existing activities and expansion plans
Supporting local parents' groups
Groups of parents with disabled children in Podgorica (established by
Save the Children in 1997) and Igalo, Niksic and Ulcinj have benefited from
training from NGOs to help them develop skills to lead their own associations.
By sharing their concerns, parents are empowered to challenge discrimination
and inappropriate approaches to disability in children. They include children
in community and family activities, and are more confidant to speak about their
children and their difficulties, and to advocate for their needs and rights.
Save the Children will support these parents' associations in developing
networks, both among themselves and with associations in Serbia and
Bosnia-Hercegovina, through activities such as study visits and seminars.
Supporting toy libraries
Toy libraries in Podgorica , Igalo, Ulcinj and Niksic provide disabled children with their own space, where children with all kinds of disabilities are accepted, and where they can play with parents and with other children who are not disabled. This has a direct impact on their lives, not only in social terms, but also in relation to their development, since the toys provide a variety of physical and mental stimuli. Save the Children will open two new toy libraries: one in Cetinje and one in the north of Montenegro (either in Berane or Bijelo Polje).
Work with institutions
Save the Children (SCF) has made limited interventions at the residential Komanski Most institution for severely disabled children to improve very poor conditions there. The Italian Government has promised to refurbish the premises and, once this is done, SCF wishes to concentrate on the provision of equipment, didactic toys, a multi-sensory room, and staff training. We would expect this to improve significantly the lives of all 50 children in the institution.
Campaigning
Save the Children plans a much wider campaign to integrate children with disabilities throughout the Montenegrin school system. Having been successful at the pre-school level SCF, together with the parents' associations and other partners, will promote the idea of integration elsewhere. SCF's specific aim is to further influence professional practice and legislation and, in general, to raise public awareness of disability among children and to continue to advocate for positive change.
Register of children with special needs
There is no register of children with special needs in Montenegro. In co-operation with government ministries SCF plans to support the development of a register over the next two years, through training in data collection for professionals and volunteers already working with children special needs. The next stage will be to train nurses in delivery rooms, health centres, and elsewhere in early screening of children and working with parents.
Day care for children and young people with severe learning difficulties
Save the Children has been approached to help establish a day care centre in Podgorica by the Ministry of Labour and Social Welfare and parents' associations. It would be the first such centre in Montenegro. SCF would pilot a project in the Podgorica toy library in partnership with a parents' association. This will support 12 children, with help from parent volunteers, specialist teachers and other professionals.
To establish a permanent centre SCF would provide material and organizational support, including staff training and programme development. The ministry has offered space and will be responsible for salaries. The centre will support children who do not attend special schools because they have disabilities that prevent them from reading or writing. It will offer activities and training in everyday skills to increase children's independence and, if appropriate, to earn a living. It will benefit more than 100 children in the Podgorica area.
5. Sustainability, monitoring & evaluation
Save the Children will seek to ensure the sustainability of this project through the involvement of the three foremost ministries: Labor & Social Welfare, Education and Health. Politicians and ministry officials have demonstrated a lively interest in the programme and its activities. With professionals they have been enthusiastic about the new models and are keen to see them expanded into other areas.
SCF is working with groups of parents to ensure that the social model of disability is understood to the greatest extent possible by those closest to the target beneficiary group - disabled children. By developing parents' capacity and giving them a focus for collective activity, SCF hopes to set in motion a movement for change in society's attitudes towards disability in childhood and to challenge discrimination.
Co-operation will continue to the greatest extent possible with professionals inside and outside Yugoslavia to develop training in child-focused approaches to disability and models of direct work with children. However, we are keenly aware of the need to develop professional capacity in training and programme design within Montenegro itself, in order to ensure the long-term viability of the programme in an uncertain political context. This will require capacity building for selected professionals in the ministries and for staff of SCF and local partners.
The programme will continue to be carefully planned, monitored and assessed. Methods of monitoring and assessment include regular reports by staff and consultants, participant evaluations of training programmes and seminars, monitoring by parents of toy library use, collecting together relevant press and publicity material, and both external and internal assessment of activities for disabled children themselves.
A pilot integration project in a kindergartens in Podgorica
Special needs children used to be integrated into pre-school groups spontaneously, on a case by case basis, depending on the good-will of pre-school teachers. In the first year of the Pilot Project to integrate special needs children into mainstream pre-school groups in Podgorica's kindergartens, Save the Children started by introducing 4 children into two groups. These four children were boys who lacked social skills and found it hard to relate to other children. They had suffered discrimination and had not been accepted by previous pre-school teachers. Each child was psychologically tested and found to have mild learning and speech difficulties. This was a challenge for four volunteer pre-school teachers. At the meeting with parents both of non-disabled and disabled children where the group discussed children's rights to education and were able to express their prejudices about disabled people, the parents agreed to accept these boys into their children's groups. One boy with speech difficulties left kindergarten after a few months, because his parents decided to take him abroad to different doctors and speech therapists. Although two to three days a month of professional support from Belgrade was made available, this was not enough to fully support the pre-school teachers. In spite of this, there was evidence at the end of a year that the children had developed and progressed.
After this one year experience, Save the Children started with seriously preparing pre-school teachers before integrating other special needs children. At the end of August '99, we organised a 3-days seminar about disability awareness, inclusion, of children with different disabilities, early childhood development and the experiences of one year pilot integration.
Parents meetings were held in each chosen pre-school groups before integrating new children. Meetings were about disability awareness and rights of each child to attend pre-schools and play and grow up with non-disabled children of the same age. Questionnaires about attitudes were given to all parents of non-disabled children. Amongst the parents who responded (just under half) there were those whose attitudes were moved toward acceptance inclusion and those whose attitudes were positive at the beginning of project. They found that their children were more tolerant were more able to recognise the needs of and more willing to help their disabled friends.
A team of professionals (psychologist, speech therapist and defectologist - our term for special teacher) from kindergarten and the same professionals from outside were chosen, additionally trained to support pre-school teachers in each 8 groups, visiting them once a week for two hours. They were following the child's development, writing reports, giving simple additional tasks to the child's parents. The team of professionals was attending monthly meetings with teachers, discussing children, and giving lectures for parents about different themes chosen by parents on their monthly meetings. The Professionals' work was also supervised monthly by an advisor from Belgrade with additional training in making individually stimulating programmes for children, and in any other key areas.
Children with special needs, 16 children were divided in 8
groups (with 20 - 45 children in each) and were psychologically tested with B-L
development scale in September 1999 and in June 2000 by an adviser from
Belgrade, because our chosen professionals haven't got experience with young
disabled children yet. Each development area was covered and followed: gross
and fine motor skills, co-ordination, communication and language development,
attention and cognitive skills, socialisation and self-help skills.
Individuals' short-term programmes were made and given to the parents.
At
the beginning and at the end of the project both teachers and professionals
were given a full checklist to complete about the child's abilities and
behaviour.
At the end of school year (Jun '00) there were 15 children in the
group, (one boy with hearing impairments left group after two months). Each had
shown visible progress in some developmental area such as socialisation and
communication. From these 15 children (4 girls and 11 boys), aged 3-7:
-
One boy (5) had behavioural problems which are solved and from the next year he
will attend pre-school without special support;
- A girl (8), with speech
problems, was prepared for schooling and is going to attend mainstream primary
school;
- A boy (7) with mild learning difficulties is also going to try
attending a small mainstream school in his living place;
- Another boy (7)
with moderate learning difficulties and very small number of speaking words is
going to try attending special school for children with mild learning
difficulties;
- A boy with autism, the youngest one (now 4), improved a lot
his communication skills. He is more patient, can longer fixed his attention to
different activities;
- Two children with cerebral palsy improved their
motor-skills, communications and socialisation;
- The other 8 children
almost all of whom have both learning and speech difficulties, have also
visible progress in their development.
Parents of disabled children were satisfied at the end of a year of the integration programme. Some of them expected more therapeutic treatment, but the others were more realistic. A few hadn't been aware that their child had got learning difficulties at all, and had not recognised the need to stimulate the child at home, or the need to ask for professional support.
This project is based in Podgorica and consists of training for staff
and parents, screening of disabled children and developing programmes of
individual support for them within mainstream activities. Teachers and parents
have been encouraged by the good progress made by the children and this has led
to greater openness to the idea of inclusive pre-school education. There has
been significant, positive discussion among education professionals. All these
developments have coincided with the drafting of Montenegrin legislation on
pre-school education and it is expected that the promotion of inclusive
education at this level will soon become law. This is a direct consequence of
SCF's work, and a very good example of advocacy resulting from concrete
programme activity.
SCF will continue to support eight existing integration
groups in pre-schools in Podgorica and expand inclusive education into 10 new
pre-school institutions in different municipalities in Montenegro. After that
experience we are going towards pilot integration into the mainstream primary
schools and towards changing curriculum for educating pre/school teachers .
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03/10/2000