Kontakt 2007, 9(2):358-362 | DOI: 10.32725/kont.2007.054

Deficient children in the familyHealth and Social Sciences

László Horváth

University of Debrecen, Faculty of Health, Nyíregyháza, Hungary

The birth of a deficient child gives special tasks to the family and the environment. I examine the supporting work of health care and social providing systems. I make statements about the methods of assistance provided within the family or in residental institutions. My aim is to describe the best possible ways of connecting these services.
My method includes literary analysis and collecting data about family relationships on voluntary basis.The article contains the most up-to-date principles, procedures and the best possible ways of connecting them to each other. I give a picture of the most important declarations of the Agreement of the United Nations Organization concerning the Rights of Deficient People and of the Madrid Declaration of the European Union, as well as of the National Activity Plan accepted in Hungary. I show the process of the ability of self-sufficiency in a flow chart. This process is based on creating the supportive relationship, assessment of the individual needs, working out and applying the suitable developmental programmes needed, and the restoration of the autonomy, which should be the goal during the whole process. I deal with the principles of normalization and integration.
The World Health Organization (WHO) accepted the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF, in Hungarian FNO). We hope that a new conception and a new practice will begin in the international assessment of deficiency and also in the professional attitude connected to it. Its real advantage for social work is that it breaks with the impairment-tracking linear theory /e.g. International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities and Handicaps, ICIDH/.
I describe a six-step process, which could be the up-to-date model for supporting deficient children and their families. Let me mention some of these steps: early recognition of deficiency, health care and social services provided within the family, if the deficient child is taken to a residential institution, the child should keep in touch with the family and the institution should strengthen their relationship. The research work goes on by describing how the services are connected.

Keywords: deficient children; family; self-sufficiency; principle of normalization; principle of integration

Received: October 10, 2007; Accepted: November 16, 2007; Published: December 21, 2007  Show citation