Historie, současnost a perspektivy rané péče v Pardubickém kraji

Abstract

Prezentovaný příspěvek si klade za cíl představit jednu z forem péče o ohrožené dítě – službu sociální prevence, ranou péči, včetně její historie, současnosti a perspektivy v Pardubickém kraji. Prováděný longitudinální výzkum u konkrétního poskytovatele této služby dává možnost analýzy vybraných dat. Tak může být potvrzena opodstatněnost a efektivita poskytované služby pro velice zranitelnou cílovou skupinu – rodinu s dítětem raného věku s limitovanými možnostmi socializace v důsledku zdravotního postižení (smyslového, mentálního, komunikačního či kombi- novaného).

The theme of early care, i.e. care for an endangered child at an early age and for his family, is a very topical theme given the current criticism of institutional care. The UN Committee for the Rights of the Child, for example, has been very critical of the practices of the Czech Republic in the field of institutional care, complaining that the CR sends a large number of children to children’s homes and institutions for infants, and is one of the EU states with the highest proportion of children in institutional care. It has recommended that greater efforts be made to work with the child’s own family, and this may be effectively furthered by activities developed as part of early care (intervention). Historically, early care or early intervention as it is known abroad, i.e. care for very young children with health disabilities and their families, has some roots in the Czech Republic. According to Matějček (2002) the Czech Republic was one of the first countries where it was put into practice. The question of therapeutic care and help for children with special needs at an early age was timidly raised in the early 1950s and despite intensive development it still left much to be desired. The year 1989 was a watershed. The post-revolution situation opened up the possibility of establishing state and non-state organisa- tions concerned with early care. Organisations providing early care faced a long road, as an interdisciplinary team of special teachers, social workers and others specialising in professional help for children, became today’s practitioners of early care. They accompany the child’s family in the natural home environment, help them to adapt and to cope with crisis situations including the specific develop- ment of the child, and do this to the extent that the family itself asks for help. Early care practitioners are aware that the biggest experts on a child are his or her own parents, and this is the foundation of the approach of the current social prevention intervention service. One of the centres that provide a social prevention service by early care (in line with Law 108/2006 on Social Services in valid wording) in the Pardubice Region is the Early Care Centre Středisko rané péče (SRP) in Pardubice. It has been provid- ing early care since 1st February 2003. Early care provided by the SRP was regis- tered by a ruling of the Regional Authority of the Pardubice Region, department of social affairs. Since 3rd July 2006 the SRP has been a centre approved by the As- sociation of Practitioners in Early Care. The centre is a regional organisation and provides services in accordance with the Standards of Early Care. The mission of the SRP is to support parents and support the development of the child of early age (up to 7 years) with at-risk development (complications at birth, low birth weight, premature babies, hypoxia and so on), or with physical, mental or combined dis- abilities in the Pardubice region by means of a complex of activities. iven that the centre has been working for ten years now and thanks to longitu- dinal research undertaken here, we can analyse what are already relatively high- quality data sets about the clients of the centre. We focused both on the develop- ment of the age structure of clients and on analysis of the disabilities diagnosed. Inter alia we found a significantly higher proportion of boys than girls in almost all time periods. There is a declining trend in average age of end of care and in overall length of care. The proportion of different diagnoses is quite variable. For example, there has been a decline in the number of clients diagnosed with cerebral palsy and substantial increase in the proportion of diagnoses of autistic spectrum and autism. A total of 236 anonymised records of SRP clients were used in the study.