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Summary: This casebook analyses the lessons for
working with disabled children learned
from a radical and ambitious programme
initiated by Oxfam GB at the height of
the war in Bosnia. Oxfam's Summary of the publication
This casebook analyses the lessons for working with disabled children
learned from a radical and ambitious programme initiated by Oxfam GB
at the height of the war in Bosnia. As elsewhere in Eastern Europe,
disabled children in Former Yugoslavia were traditionally cared for
in centralised institutions which were run by State-paid
professionals. When State services began to break down under the
pressure of war, Oxfam assumed responsibility for one such centre in
Tuzla. The emphasis of the centre gradually evolved from the
provision of clinical services to the integration of the children
into the local community. This alternative approach slowly won the
support of the local authorities, and the project is now regarded as
a model. This book, written for planners and project officers in non-
government development organisations, examines three major themes:
development in conflict working on long-term social development
projects in an unstable society; disability in conflict, the
politicisation of disability, and the consequences for different
groups of disabled people; and the social model of disability in a
post-communist society , introducing the western European approach to
disability, which depends on individuals and groups being free to
campaign for their rights, into a State which is still making the
transition from the collectivist values of communism.
Rachel Hastie was until recently Oxfam's Deputy Country
Representative for
Bosnia, managing a programme of relief distributions and projects for
women
and disabled people.
Owner: Rachel Hastie