According to the Association of Disabled Youth (UMHCG), public health workers in Montenegro should undergo a set of education and training on models of approach to disability and treatment of persons with disabilities (PWD), including persons with neurodevelopmental impairments.
UMHCG director Marina Vujacic said that no category of disabled people has adequate access to health care, including the scope of rights, range and quality of services.
"So even people with a neurodevelopmental spectrum of impairment do not have adequate health care," Vujacic told the MINA agency.
She recalled that in 2009, Montenegro ratified the United Nations (UN) Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which, among others, guarantees the right to health care and habilitation and rehabilitation, including early identification and intervention of impairments.
"In Montenegro, this is still not always done to an adequate extent," said Vujačić.
As she pointed out, the subsequent quality and range of health services often depends on early identification and intervention.
Vujačić stated that first of all it is necessary to adopt a comprehensive Protocol on the provision of health care for PWDs that would be applied in all health care institutions and at all levels of health care.
"In addition, it is necessary that all health care workers and employees in health care undergo a set of education and training on models of access to disability and treatment of PWDs, including people with neurodevelopmental impairments," said Vujačić.
She said that, then, healthcare facilities, equipment and services in healthcare must be at the highest level of achievement and development, modern and accessible for use by all categories of PWDs.
This, as explained by Vujačić, includes physical, architectural and accessibility of information, communications, technologies and systems, as well as easy-to-understand and simple language and a model of access to disability based on human rights, which Montenegro committed to as a signatory to the Convention.
"After that, I believe, there would be a change in approach and attitude towards children from the earliest age and PWD, including timely and complete information about the situation and proposed interventions, as well as the consequences of those interventions and alternatives," said Vujacic.
The Ministry of Health previously told the MINA agency that the Strategy for Early Development, which foresees the reform of the Center for Autism into the Center for Early Development, will further improve the field of health care for people with neuro-developmental disorders.
The foreseen reforms, as they clarified at the time, entail the unification of the responses of the departments of health, education and labor and social care, which will work on early interventions, and special emphasis will be placed on psychological support for parents.
According to Vujacic, practice has shown that the reform of the Center for Autism is necessary.
"And the things we pointed out at the very beginning of the announcement of its establishment turned out to be true, unfortunately. The autism center has just shown all the weaknesses of the health system, although I am convinced that the management and most of the employees absolutely tried to give their best," Vujacic said.
She said that there was a lack of continuous and necessary support from various institutions of the system and the entire state, along with excessive expectations of parents and families, which are logical and justified, but often lead to irrational behavior.
"It is not enough to just open an institution and hire or otherwise engage the necessary personnel, but much more and different is necessary from the very planning phase to the realization, and that was missing in the concrete", Vujačić pointed out.
The mother of an autistic boy, Tarik, and at the same time nurse Sabina Decević, agrees that the education of employees in the health system would represent a major step forward for the authorities.
"I think that very often it is not a lack of empathy or understanding, but the employees' ignorance of how to approach people with autism," said Decević.
Decević said that even she, who is a health worker, did not learn about these disorders in detail at school.
"However, later, through my child and meeting other people with autism, I learned that autism is different for each person, but that negative attitudes are the same for all people with autism. That's why we need a lot of education", Decević believes.
She said that it is quite difficult to communicate with a child who has autism, and it is not verbal.
She explained that from the beginning she tried to have non-verbal communication with her son, through gestures and short words that are easier for him to pronounce.
"When he has a headache or a toothache, he touches my head with his finger and then his head several times in a row. That's the only way I can tell if he's in pain. Somehow I managed to teach him to do the same with another person if I am not in his presence," said Decević.
As she added, if they have to wait somewhere, given that her son, who has autism, does not have any physical deformities, it is difficult to explain to people why he cannot wait.
"His attention is short-lived and his concept of understanding time and waiting is different from ours, so it happened that when we were waiting at the doctor, other parents around us did not understand how difficult it was for him to stay in a narrow corridor or a small room with a lot of people Decević said.
She said that her son's internal struggle and the inability to express that he does not want to be in a crowd with others results in aggressive behavior, which is not approved by the environment.
"It shouldn't be, of course, that's why the wait should be reduced to as short as possible in order to avoid such situations," said Decević.
She stated that this is why she came up with the idea of implementing accessibility cards in order to make the stay in clinics for these children as short as possible, as well as to develop awareness in the environment that autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder that is accompanied by a whole range of other disorders.
Those cards, as explained by Decević, were accepted in the Clinical Center and the Children's Hospital, and later their purpose was extended to Health Centers and other hospitals in Montenegro.
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