Sat, Jul 04 2009

Children with mental disabilities in Bulgaria have no access to education

Wed, Oct 15 2008 17:19 CET bySvetlana Guineva 64 Views

After reviewing a complaint filed by the Hungarian-based NGO Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC), the European Committee for Social Rights (ECSR) issued a statement saying that Bulgaria has discriminated against children with mental disabilities depriving them from an equal access to education, Agence France Press reported as quoted by the Bulgarian National Radio.

The complaint by MDAC is based on a report published by the State Agency for Child Protection in 2005, indicating that only 71 children at 27 social care homes went to conventional or special schools. In Bulgaria, a total of three thousand children are left to the social care of the state, which means that only six per cent of them get some form of education, according to the official statistics.

ECSR considered this to be a discriminative practice and has pointed out in its statement that in Sofia not a single child from a social care home attends school.

Bulgarian officials have conceded in the past that there was a great number of children who get little or no education, but argued that this occurrence was not limited only to those with mental disabilities. In that respect, the accusation of discriminative practices was unreasonable, has been the official reply.
 
After the warning extended by the ECSR, Bulgaria has to initiate changes in compliance with the regulations of the European Social Charter.

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