Beware what you boast about

In its November 2020 edition, The Lancet Child and Adolescent Health includes a letter [here] signed by six disability activists from several leading NGOs: The Validity Foundation, European Network on Independent Living, Disability Rights International, the International Federation for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, and the International Disability Alliance. All advocate for the rights of people with disabilities. 

Their letter is entitled "Institutionalisation and deinstitutionalisation of children". 

They were responding to an article in a previous edition which had justified "placing children in group homes for so-called short -term placement 'with the objective of child reintegration' and if 'reintegration is not possible or in the child's best interests.'" 

The letter continued:

"...The authors' rationales for placing children in group homes are deeply problematic. Once children are in group homes, temporary placement tends to become permanent, especially for children with disabilities in countries that do not invest in supporting families. The Lancet's own scientific findings on the harm caused by institutions (including small group homes) refute the possibility that such placement can ever be in the child's best interest. Anything less than the right to family life for children with disabilities is discrimination under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The CRPD Committee has said that the core of the right to independent living for children is the right to grow up in a family and 'large or small group homes are especially dangerous for children.'"

Within days of reading the above I watched a video clip posted by Aleh's indefatigable PR people showcasing the skills of a child who resides in a large Aleh institution - not a small group home.

She appears to function on quite a high level both physically and cognitively and Aleh was patting itself on the back for her achievements. 

Haya and her new ear-rings

But the PR folks were contradicting themselves. On their website, they remind donors, ad nauseum, that Aleh residents "have complex disabilities and require intensive support to perform daily activities."

The child in this clip patently does not fit in that category. 

So, why, for heaven's sake, is she locked up in an institution? And why are the anti-institutionalization arguments posed in that Lancet letter absent from any discourse in Israel about the care of people with disabilities? 

The cogent case for deinstitutionalization must finally penetrate the Israeli psyche, its government and its politics. Its embrace by our society is beyond overdue. Its deadline: yesterday!

Here is our Haya modeling her new pair of earrings purchased on line this week from an Israeli shop, closed due to Corona but delivers its items to your door in record time!