Young Disabled Still Institutionalised in Armenia

Friday, 7 January, 2011

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Karin Grigoryan

Two decades after the end of Soviet rule in Armenia, disabled youngsters continue to be housed in old-style children’s homes that effectively isolate them from the rest of society.

Of the 1,000 children living in 12 institutions, eight of which are state-funded, 360 are mentally or physically impaired.

“In all these institutions there are kids who remain there after coming of age,” said Yelena Kiraksoyan, who runs Warm Hearth, an innovative home for young disabled adults in the capital Yerevan.

The Warm Hearth centre was set up in 2005 to provide community-based residential care for 12 young people with physical or mental impairments. Almost all of them started out in state-run children’s homes.

Among conventional children’s homes, one at Kharberd, founded in 1953, is among the very few that are specially designed for the disabled. It is overcrowded, with 277 living there instead of the intended 160.

A new accommodation block opened last year to provide separate housing for inmates who have reached adulthood, but it already has 118 people living there instead of the 30 or 40 it was designed for.

Staff at the Kharberd home say the overcrowding and mixing of age-groups create problems.

“We naturally operate differently when they’re over 18,” Irina Yaghubyan, who runs education programmes at Kharberd, told IWPR. “But when they end up in the same group as ten-year-olds, or when there are just too many children, there’s less of an opportunity for an individual approach.”

The government admits it is falling down on specialised provision for different age-groups and on efforts to integrate them into the community, but says it lacks the money to do better.

“It’s a serious problem, although even the European countries haven’t fully resolved such matters. So we’re forced to house [adults] alongside children,” labour and social affairs minister Arthur Grigoryan said when the new unit was launched in September.

Before the adult section opened, the only place where young adults from Kharberd could be moved to, if appropriate, was a psychiatric hospital in the town of Vardenis. But experts say the hospital is not geared up for the kind of therapies needed in cases where relatively mild psychiatric disorders are involved.

“People suffering from behavioural disorders are on the edge and may display antisocial tendencies, but that doesn’t make them mentally disabled,” said Diana Galstyan, an independent art therapist in Yerevan.

Although Warm Hearth only has one resident with a diagnosed psychiatric condition rather than another form of disability, she gets specialised psychiatric care there and Kiraksoyan says she is doing well.

The centre was founded by Natalie Rizzieri, an American Peace Corps volunteer who spent two years working in an Armenian children’s home.

“Natalie had a real shock when she found out that in Armenia, young people who need to be seeing therapists and psychologists are packed off to mental hospitals,” Olga Dabaghyan, one of the directors of Warm Hearth, recalled.

Warm Hearth has applied for government funding, so far without success, and is currently supported by foreign donors.

Its managers have urged the government to provide a dozen or so residences for disabled young people, instead of locking them away in institutions.

So far, though, Warm Hearth remains a unique experiment, and most disabled children and young adults remain in homes like the one in Kharberd, where isolation makes it hard for them to make friends outside or prepare for life and work outside the institution.

“These issues may be dealt with in the new law on social integration of the disabled,” said Anahit Gevorgyan, deputy head of the department for disablement affairs at the labour and social affairs ministry. “Armenia is far from the European model of social integration, but we committed to reaching that level.”

Karin Grigoryan is a freelance journalist.in Armenia.