Crippled Children Program

The Crippled Children Program is one of the six target programs of the Children of Russia Program endorsed by President Yeltsin’s decree No. 1696 on 18 August 1994.

The strategic goal of this president program has been to improve children’s status in the Russian Federation by creating more favorable conditions for their life, education and development on national level.

The Crippled Children Program is specifically addressed to problems of handicapped children and families in which they are brought up. Besides developing basic principles of integrated approaches to such problems, it aims at creating such conditions in which such families can live an independent life. It also aims at dealing with medico-social, socioeconomic and moral problems of crippled children and their parents and deals with matters of children disability prevention. It ties to develop a system of rehabilitation and design and manufacture devices and appliances essential to help crippled children to adapt themselves to a normal life within a community.

The 1998-2000 Crippled Children Program, a corollary of the similar programs of the previous years, was endorsed by the Russian Government’s degree of 19 September 1997.

The major reason why this program has been adopted is that there have been increasingly more crippled or otherwise disabled children both in the Russian Federation and elsewhere in the world. Their numbers as of 1 January 1998 amounted to 564,000, of whom more than 100,000 were those afflicted with cerebral palsy.

Among the factors precipitating children disability are, in the field place, worsening of the ecological environment, bad working conditions for women, increase in traumatism, lack of normal working conditions and healthy lifestyle standards, and high level of incidence of illness among parents, especially women.

Despite all the actions taken in the Russian Federation to improve living conditions, health services, education standards, and occupational and professional training for crippled or otherwise disabled children, there are still a great many social, economic, psychological, educational and medical problems to be dealt with.

The agency that has commissioned this program on government level and contributed, more than anyone else, to its development is The Russian Federation Ministry of Employment and Social Development.

The aims and tasks of the program are:

 creating conditions in which incidence of children disability could be reduced, severe restrictions to live activity of crippled children could be removed and children disability in general could be prevented;

 developing rehabilitation institutions and boarding schools for crippled children;

 acquiring rehabilitation devices and appliances for crippled and mentally and physically handicapped children;

 directing research and pilot design efforts towards developing devices for retarded children;

 providing scientific methods and information bases on children disability;

 constructing children boarding schools and rehabilitation centers;

 providing institutions for disabled children with transport and farming vehicles;

 training and upgrading skilled social workers and other specialists;

 promoting exercises and recreation activities with crippled children;

 conducting entertainment and other cultural events with crippled children;

 providing joint holiday facilities for crippled children and their parents.

The program is to be implemented within 1996 to 2000.

The agencies responsible for the major parts of the program are the Ministry of Employment and Social Development, the Ministry of Public Health, the Ministry of General and Vocational Education, and the Ministry of Culture.

The expected results of the program are:

a lower level of risk of the birth of children with congenital or hereditary diseases, crippled children or children with different functional disturbances likely to result in disability, and a lower incidence of disability in children from chronic diseases;

preconditions created to provide equal opportunities for children with developmental deviations and integration of them into a community.

The implementation of the program is under supervision of the Ministry of Employment and Social Development, along with the Ministry of Economics, the Ministry of Finances and some other federal government agencies concerned.

Ayurveda has been acting as a co-executor of the Crippled Children Program since it was endorsed in August 1994, continuing efforts of cooperation with the Ministry of Employment and Social Development to help reduce children disabilities caused by cerebral palsy. It has since supplied a total of 250 rehabilitation centers on the territory of the Russian Federation with Adeli Suits and Adeli Rehabilitation Methods.

Alongside of supplying suits and methods, medical specialists can be trained in their application at Ayurveda’s training center based on the Skobykino Children Psycho-neurological Sanatorium in Yaroslavl.