Enabling China’s Disabled

I love the vocational rehabilitation center. I love the dis- abled persons’ home. It’s my second home.” These were the first words written by Yang Jia, 32, at the vocational rehabilitation center of Heyi Subdistrict Disabled People’s Home in Beijing. Yang suffers from amentia. For her, writing is hard, but she and other handicapped persons at the center are encouraged by teachers to jot down their thoughts and feelings. Doing so helps them to express themselves more effectively in their daily lives.

The Beijing Municipal Government proposed in 2008 that by the end of the 11th Five-year Plan period (2006-2010) every subdistrict and township in Beijing should have at least one disabled people’s home in order to provide easy access to a variety of services including rehabilitation, education, employment, social security, legal advice, living aid and cultural and sports activities. Heyi Subdistrict Disabled People’s Home was subsequently established, and its vocational rehabilitation center makes up one of the wings of the 300-plus-square-meter home. Since its opening in August 2009, Yang Jia has been a regular participant in activities at the center.

“This vocational rehabilitation center is mainly for mentally handicapped people. Compared to persons with other disabili- ties, they face grimmer challenges in gaining employment,”Xiao Chunhua, director of Heyi Subdistrict Disable Persons’Federation, told China Today. She is also in charge of the disabled persons’ home.

In the vocational rehabilitation center, the 20 or so mentally disabled attendees not only learn vocational skills like handicrafts, but also engage in other learning, which is usually blended into fun games. More importantly, under the guidance of the teachers, they learn how to better communicate with people. This is the most difficult barrier for them to break, according to Wan Shuying, a teacher at the center. To enrich their cultural life, calligraphy, flute lessons and choir recitals are organized. Volunteer teachers also regularly lend extra hands to the center’s permanent staff.

The rehabilitation center has become an indispensable part of the lives of mentally challenged residents in the region. But it wasn’t always that way.

“At the beginning, they weren’t interested in vocational rehabilitation. Families and the disabled themselves didn’t believe special training would bring any material or mental benefits to their lives,” Xiao told China Today.

Before attending rehabilitation training, Yang Jia lived an isolated existence. She lacked the basic skills to communicate with other people. She’d gone through a mere two years of schooling, and never left home alone. Her mother accompanied her everywhere.

Nowadays, Yang is a different person. She’s been in rehabilitation training for three years, and is able to chat freely with all kinds of people and shop by herself. What has most satisfied her is having learned to make a variety of silk flowers.

On Yang’s progress, her mother proudly admits to saying the same thing to the center’s staff and to friends and relatives:“”I’m just very grateful to the disabled people’s home.”

According to the latest statistics, there are 85 million persons with some form of disability in China, accounting for 6.34 percent of the country’s population. In 1988, the China Disabled Persons’ Federation was founded, followed by the successive establishments of local chapters in county-and-above administrative regions. These federations sought to better understand and meet disabled persons’ needs and more effectively safeguard their rights and interests. In 1990 the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Protection of Disabled Persons was promulgated, and it was revised in 2008 to further strengthen protection measures.

On July 20, 2012, the central government released the 12th Five-year Plan for the Basic Public Service System. It stressed that the state will provide disabled persons with basic public services according to their special needs; create a favorable social environment for them in which they can effectively participate in social affairs, and provide a stable system of guarantees that ensures each a livelihood and continued personal development.

An Improving social security system for special Groups

Currently in China, the national social security system covers most disabled persons and provides them with various guarantees and support.

The national system of subsistence allowances provides the basic guarantee that disabled persons of low income are to enjoy an adequate standard of living. According to government statistics, of the 622,000 disabled persons living in Beijing in 2011, 40,400 collected a means-tested monthly subsistence allowance. Besides the allowance, some local disabled persons’federations also grant subsidies to members on low incomes.

Xu Guanghua, a 44-year-old with cognitive impairment, also receives vocational rehabilitation training in the Heyi Disabled People’s Home. She has a 14-year-old daughter studying in middle school, and her husband’s poor health has prohibited him from seeking gainful employment for many years. Apart from a RMB 530 subsistence allowance from the municipal government, Xu also receives a monthly subsidy of RMB 100 from the Beijing Disabled Persons’ Federation.

Meanwhile, the rehabilitation center finds buyers for the handicrafts Xu and other attendees produce, allowing them to bolster their incomes. In July, Xu earned more than RMB 800 from making artificial flowers.

The Beijing Municipal Government also gives a monthly lunch subsidy of RMB 230 to disabled persons attending vocational rehabilitation centers. The government subsidies, plus the income from handicrafts, essentially cover Xu’s family’s living expenses.

Some households with unemployed, severely disabled members are not eligible for the subsistence allowance, since their collective income is marginally above the cut-off set by the state. But expensive caring needs can easily eat away their incomes and plunge whole families into financial stress. In recent years this has been changing – many regions in China such as Beijing and Qinghai now award subsidies to the families of severely disabled persons who can’t secure employment. It’s a step forward.

For disabled persons joining the social and medical insurance systems, the central government requires local governments to extend to them means-tested prefer- ential treatment. Nowadays, many regions have implemented a policy whereby local governments pay for social and medical insurance for severely disabled persons. For example, in 2011 Ningdu County of Jiangxi Province introduced a new measure that allows severely disabled residents in the county’s rural and urban areas to join the state pension insurance scheme free of charge. The county government pays the basic insurance fee. Also in 2011, Changshan County of Zhejiang Province introduced a policy allowing the region’s 2,521 severely disabled residents to gain access to free medical insurance. The county government pays the premium.

Local governments have also introduced special relief policies for disable persons trapped in unexpected or temporary predicaments. Liu Jie works for a community center in Heyi Subdistrict. His wife, Tong Jialing, is mentally handicapped. In　September 2011, when Tong was going through a particularly rough patch, she disappeared from her home. She was found by the police three days later, having fallen from a highway overpass. She was severely injured and lucky to have come away from the fall with her life. Costs of subsequent medical treatment were mostly covered by her medical insurance, but the expense of RMB 100 daily for nursing care was an unaffordable financial burden on the family.

“After learning of the family’s predicament, we immediately reported the case to government departments such as the Fengtai District Disabled Persons’ Federation and the local civil affair bureau. We applied to provide the family with a temporary relief fund. In the end, we obtained RMB 15,000, which helped Tong and her family pull through,” Xiao told China Today.

Rehabilitation, no Longer Just a Dream

On June 11, 2012, the State Council released the National Human Rights Action Plan (2012-2015). Over the next three years China will help over 13 million disabled persons to gain access to varying forms of rehabilitation by carrying out a series of national rehabilitation programs across the country.

Disabled persons’ homes are playing a fundamental role in communities by providing those in need with rehabilitation opportunities. In the Heyi Disabled Persons’ Home, there is a vocational training center, a library, a legal consultation room, a legal and psychological consultation service, a rehabilitation room and a cultural activity program. “The facility is tailor-made for people with disabilities,” Xiao said.

Those most reliant on such facilities are the mentally handicapped. Most come everyday for vocational rehabilitation training.

“Due to their mental retardation, learning to complete a simple task can take a long time. But I’ve seen dramatic changes in their abilities over the last few years the center has been running. I often say it’s a miracle,” faculty member Wan Shuying confided.

The “miracle” Wan mentions is that the mentally handicapped persons in the center have learned to communicate and cooperate with other people, express themselves effectively and make a variety of handicrafts to supplement their incomes. The change from when they first came to the center could not be greater. Some have even learned to read music and are able to play many songs on the flute. Rehabilitation is working.

“I’m very happy to be here. I get to spend time with people like me, and this gives me a sense of belonging. I feel like I’m achieving something, especially when I finish working on some handicrafts and see the final result,” Xu Guanghua told China Today.

The Heyi Disabled People’s home is a leading example of the community-based initiatives the Chinese government has been introducing over the past few years to better the lives of the nation’s lesser-abled population. In all schemes, financial assistance and subsidizing medical costs is key. In 2010 the Ministry of Civil Affairs spearheaded a project to offer free replacement of prostheses for disabled people living under state care in underdeveloped western provinces. Last year it was expanded to more disabled people, including those who suffer permanent physically injuries as a result of trying to help other people, as well as to disabled students and those simply unable to afford aiding apparatuses.

China has also introduced a wide range of rehabilitation projects for its poorer disabled citizens, including free rehabilitation treatment for disabled children aged 0-6 from struggling families, free medication for people with mental diseases, and free operations for those who have lost their eye sight to cataracts.

education and employment Guarantee Independence

In 1994 the State Council released the Regulation on the Education of Disabled Persons, which enshrines the right of the mentally and physically disadvantaged to receive an education. Recently, the government proposed to improve the compulsory education system for children and teenagers with special needs. Under the scheme, those with minor disabilities are enrolled in ordinary schools or special-needs classes, and others will have the opportunity to attend special education schools. The government plans to build more of these schools as well as special-purpose vocational colleges to cater to the unique requirements of special-needs children.

During the 11th Five-year Plan period, China carried out a program to construct special education schools in central and western China, with the goal of having at least one such facility in every county or city with a population of 300,000 or more.

But despite easier access to special education for disable children, parents have still professed to worrying about the future. A common concern is who will provide for their children when parents are too old to care for them properly. “We would feel relieved if some special institutions could be established that would take care of those with mentally disabilities by providing them with simple, suitable jobs after their education,”said the mother of an eight-year-old mentally retarded boy in Taiyuan, Shanxi Province.

The vocational rehabilitation centers in Beijing could become models for other regions. The capital’s centers have a good track record of providing mentally handicapped persons with a solid vocational platform.

But Beijing is not sitting back from further reform. The capital continues to tweak its disabled care system. “Recently I attended a meeting at the municipal government. I was informed that during the 12th Five-year Plan period, social insurance will provide disabled persons with training at Beijing’s vocational rehabilitation centers. You know, it is really hard for mentally handicapped persons to land a good job. So this new policy is one step toward enabling the disabled to stay in the centers longer-term and build the basis for a decent standard of living,” Xiao happily reported.

Transitioning the disabled from state-supported vocational centers to the workplace is a key imperative for policymakers. According to national legislation, disabled employees should account for at least 1.5 percent of an employer’s workforce. Those who recruit disabled employees are also entitled to preferential tax policies.

Currently, the national employment rate among deaf-mutes and those with limited mobility is fairly high. According to Xiao, in Heyi Subdistrict, 289 disabled persons with workready skill sets were searching for employment in 2012. With help from the Heyi Disabled Persons’ Federation, 288 found jobs.

Following the government’s lead, private business and the general public have begun to show more concern for the fate of the country’s disabled and their employment prospects. For instance, Huangshan Longyue Brass Products Co., Ltd. of Anhui Province has on its payroll over 100 disabled persons, accounting for 80 percent of its workforce. “Our products are not technology-intensive. Most of our disabled employees are deafmutes or have minor physical disabilities. They enjoy the same benefits package as able employees,” said Huang Sheguang, chief of the company’s management office.

Many local disabled persons’ federations have established online platforms through which disabled job hunters can find work posted by enterprises.

Local governments have also been responsible for carrying out various work-orientated training programs. According to data from the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, from 2006 to 2010 a total of 3.76 million disabled persons in both urban and rural areas received vocational training, and nearly half million obtained vocation-specific certificates.

Unfortunately, some disabled persons are not aware of, or even have no access to preferential treatment and welfare initiatives due to the inefficient work of a small minority of local government departments. “More high-quality personnel are especially needed in local disabled persons’ federations to ensure preferential treatment reaches those who need it,” Xiao indicated.

As director of a grassroots disabled persons’ federation herself, Xiao understands how difficult living with a severe disability can be. “Currently, China’s policies essentially guarantee disabled persons a basic standard of living. It’s OK, but there is still a long way to go before China catches up with developed countries in terms of this kind of welfare,” Xiao told China Today. She hopes the central government keeps pushing ahead with reform and new policies to help disabled persons.

Zhang Haidi, chairperson of the China Disabled Persons’ Federation, pointed out in a seminar in July that there is still a large gap between the living conditions of the disabled and the ablebodied in China. But as the government, businesses and citizens continue to look at new ways to improve the lives of the 85 million disabled in the country, this gap is closing.