The information below was taken from an invitation letter.WALKOUT - IZHOD
From 18th July to 24th August we will march through the all psychiatric hospitals and long-term special care homes, we will also visit some homes for the mentally disabled and old age, youth homes as well as alien detention centres in Slovenia. We will start in Hrastovec and finish in Ljubljana. March will be 700 km long.
WHY?
Slovenia is one of the most institutionalised countries in the world. In every hundred inhabitants one is detained in an institution of a close type - in Slovenia there is more than 20.000 people confined in psychiatric hospitals, social care institutions, old age and nursing homes, institutions for mental disabilities and other residential institutions. Anybody with long-term distress because of their illness, old age, mental distress, otherness, physical or mental disability has only 50% chance to live outside an institution. The odds being essentially slimmer if one is poor, lonely or just eccentric.
Total institutions are crimes of peace. To keep the peace and order it is necessary to mark people, dispose of them and close them in special disciplinary space. There is no peace crime tribunal.
Total institutions remove people from their environment, isolate them, take their identity away. They mark and smear them, disable and exclude. People loose their civil rights, are unable to express their opinion, are punished, because they do not conform. They loose their homes, friends. Closed institutions are source of abuse and humiliation.
Then again, prisons do not rehabilitate, mental hospitals do not cure ... on the contrary, they cause mortification, numbness, apathy, disinterest and radical withdrawal - hospitalism, institutionalism.
The crime of closing is still greater since we know the ways how to help people without closing. Even those who need greatest possible support can live among us.
The process of deinstitutionalisation is included in the majority of the relevant international and national documents and declarations. In most countries it is also enacted. Cautiously it has begun in Slovenia too. We started to establish group homes, non government organisations in nineties; ten years ago we have started the resettlement from the special social care homes. In four years we have moved about 400 residents into the community. We have tried the direct payment of the services; legislation has started to change (new Mental Health Act, preparation of Long-term Care Insurance).
But still: there are two persons closed per one who has community support. The number of beds in institutions is increasing, the scale of community care stays the same. Resettlement from the institutions has been brought to a standstill. The direct funding project encountered massive resistance and obstacles. Psychiatrists, including the acting ombudsman, resists advocacy that was cautiously introduced by the new legislation - it is curtailing their right, they say. Long-term and personal assistance legislation is on hold for years.
Because we cannot understand this and cannot agree with this, we have decided to supplant the long march through institutions (Gramsci, Dutschke) with actual WALKOUT (IZHOD) from the institutions.
BECAUSE WE WANT TO:
- Create awareness of the institutions for long-term confinement.
- Encourage the institutions to transform into person's friendly community services
- Invite people, who live in institutions, to join us and to move into the community
- Explore the reasons why institutions still exist
- Encourage people (professionals and ordinary citizens) to receive home comers from the institutions and not to send anymore people inside
- help those in power, who support deinstitutionalisation and development of community services and to criticise those who obstruct it
- contribute to create, enact or change the legislation concerned with care for people
HOW:
We wish to do this in a completely un-institutional way, as a group of citizens without any political patronage, financial donations and sponsorships. Our march is based upon belief in human hospitality and solidarity.
We expect:
- that the institutions will welcome us and offer hospitality to us
- that people on our way will receive us, too
- that we will talk together about all the aspects of institutional confinement and the support people need outside
You can join us:
You can help us:
- by joining us
- by receiving IZ-HOD people
- by putting pressure on politicians and professionals
- by helping us to organise events on our stage stopovers or by attending them
LET IT BE A MARCH OF FRIENDSHIP AND CAMARADERIE.
THE ISSUE IS SERIOUS ONE, BUT THE MARCH WILL BE A LOT OF FUN.
THIS MARCH WILL BE LONG TOO, BUT AT LEAST WE KNOW WHERE WE ARE GOING TO.
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Topic: Walkout for Deinstitutionalization across Slovenia, 2010 (Read 833 times)