In Focus: Leveling the playing field for children with disabilities

Stigma around disability drives the exclusion faced by children with disabilities across Europe and Central Asia. In Serbia, for example, 45 per cent of parents of children with disabilities say that they or their children have experienced insults, degrading treatment or harassment. Stigma and prejudice may also stop families seeking help or information, which leaves them struggling to cope and increases the risk that their child may be institutionalized. 

Children with disabilities are more likely to live in poverty than other children, with parents often giving up work to care for them, and face higher costs for their healthcare, transport and other essentials. Every country in the region provides disability benefits for children, and some offer benefits to those who care for them. But these are not always adequate or accessible, and do not reach many children who need them. In Turkmenistan, for example, 60 per cent of those with severe disabilities do not receive a disability cash benefit.

The region still has the highest rate of child institutionalization worldwide – 232 out of every 100,000 children live in institutions – double the global rate. Across Europe and Central Asia, nearly half a million children aged 0-17 years remain in residential care facilities. Governments across the region have been shifting the focus from residential institutional care to family-based options for decades, but these reforms have often left children with disabilities behind. In the absence of specialized family-based options to meet their needs, children with disabilities are up to 30 times more likely to be in formal residential care than those without disabilities. 

Health issues among young children may not be identified by service providers or parents early enough to prevent long-term impairments and specialist services are not always available – particularly in rural areas. Families may face long waiting lists for disability assessment, as well as high expenses. The services that are available often follow a medical approach to disability that aims to change the child, rather than the environment around them. Children and young people in the region are also at a high risk of mental health issues, and often lack support services to meet their needs.

Children with disabilities are more likely to miss out on education than their peers. The gaps start early: in 2022, only around 43,000 children with disabilities across 16 countries took part in early childhood education. The gaps widen during adolescence: in Georgia, almost 1 in 5 children are out of school at upper secondary school level, compared to 1 in 10 children without disabilities. Around 7 per cent of children with disabilities in Montenegro and Turkmenistan have never been to school. 

With mainstream schools often unable to cater for children with disabilities, there were 210,000 children with disabilities in special schools across the region in 2022, and thousands more in special boarding schools, isolated from their families and communities. 

Assistive technology (AT) – such as hearing aids, wheelchairs and alternative augmentative communication (technology that helps children communicate with others) – helps children with disabilities to function in the world. But a lack of access to assistive technology in the region is linked to a lack of awareness about its importance, a lack of AT products and services, and poor integration with other services such as education, as well as a shortage of trained AT professionals. 

Children with disabilities face higher risks of violence and abuse, often linked to their isolation, either in residential institutions where they are often unseen, or in their own homes. At home, children with disabilities face high risks of corporal punishment, abuse and domestic violence. More than 80 per cent of children with disabilities in Kyrgyzstan and North Macedonia, for example, have experienced psychological aggression from their caregivers. In Georgia, North Macedonia and Uzbekistan, they are more likely to experience severe physical punishment. There is also a lack of referral and support services for survivors.

Children with disabilities find it hard to access justice. The barriers can be physical, including stairs and doorways that make it difficult to visit courts, police stations and more. But they also include a lack of accessible communication techniques, which makes it harder for children to understand legal proceedings and share their views, and a lack of qualified professionals to help them communicate. UNICEF research in Albania, Georgia, Kyrgyzstan and Montenegro reveals a lack of support for children at risk of discrimination in the justice sector. Stigma about the capabilities of children with disabilities also discourages families from seeking justice.

Children with disabilities are particularly vulnerable during emergencies, yet they are often overlooked in humanitarian action – as they are in everyday life. Children with disabilities who have been affected by the war in Ukraine, for example, struggle to access essential services, medication, transport, bomb shelters or relocate to safer areas. Before the country’s full-scale war, around 45,000 children with disabilities were living in the country’s residential care institutions. Tens of thousands were sent home as the war escalated, often without the necessary support. Others remain in institutions where they are at risk of abandonment, neglect or evacuation without proper consideration of their needs. Research from Poland shows that refugee families of children with disabilities struggle to find information on the support available and face long procedures to validate disability certificates and access specialist care.

Denys is going to school for the first time this year. As a result of a complex developmental disorder, this eight-year-old boy cannot walk or talk on his own. But now he can communicate with his teachers and classmates, as well as his parents, having become the first child in Ukraine to receive an eye-tracker provided by UNICEF. 

As Denys prepared for school, his mother Natalya wondered how he would manage. “And I started looking for a tool that he could use at school and everywhere outside the home.”

The eye-tracker uses a special camera to record the movements of his eyes as he looks at images on a computer screen. During his very first lesson at school, Denys used it to read a rhyme to his classmates.

“Denys very quickly figured out how to use an eye tracker,” says Natalya. “He likes to communicate.  He can write what exactly he wants at the  moment, and we no longer need to ask him a lot of clarifying questions.”

As well as helping him to communicate and learn, the device contains a library of educational games that Denys enjoys. Denys spent a lot of time in his early years in rehabilitation institutions, and now Natalya wants to do everything she can to make sure he is included in the life of society, and that he communicates with other people as much as possible. She hopes that the device will help him to study not only at school, but also perhaps, 
in a higher educational institution in the future.

“For me, the main thing is to see that the children around him, first of all, see Denys as a friend, a classmate, and not a child with some kind of limitations,” Natalya says.