Social workers provide assistance for physically disabled

THE challenges of health care in Cuba are increasingly moving beyond experts in the field, becoming part of the duties shouldered by the country’s social workers.

Providing services for the disabled has been the goal of these young people, who serve as mediators between individuals fighting to live their lives and the agencies that provide for their medical needs.

Little Zedenia Pérez has childhood cerebral palsy (CCP). She does not speak, walk, or see; she is not hyperactive, nor is she developing normally. She is confined to bed from which she has to satisfy her bodily needs. She seems to live solely through the sounds or smells that she can easily identify when her mother, Odalys Carreras, or her father hold her in their arms or sit her up in her wheelchair. Her greatest entertainment is music, which brings the most joy into her 10-year-old life.

Although she is not her birth mother, Odalys has taken care of Zedenia since she was two-and-a-half years old, when she and the child’s father became a couple. It has been a titanic challenge for her to take on the situation and a great example of understanding and love. Talking to this reporter, she explained that the little girl’s situation was due to a complication at birth, when a hydrocephalus occurred and the umbilical cord was tangled around her neck. Shortly after the girl’s birth, her mother killed herself.

"When I found myself in this situation, I began going to all possible resources, because I didn’t know anything about the world of this illness," Odalys said. "I didn’t know that such a world existed for children. It was something completely new to me, because the treatment has been difficult and I’ve had to learn new things. My husband has taught me how to handle her. You face reality, but it’s difficult. I needed support from my neighbors and relatives, and finally I approached the social workers. They introduced me to Liannys Acosta, the young woman who has been attending to us since then, and who helps me as much as she can."

The attention that social workers provide for these types of cases began after a psychological/clinical genetic study of disabled people was carried out in 2001. The results showed that the then still-new social workers program should be responsible for this social group from 2003, with the social workers acting as catalysts in ensuring their needs are met.

One of the first things Liannys did was to learn about Zedenia’s condition and treatment, whether she needed a special diet and any other needs she had. She became part of the family.

"From a social point of view, we have become quite integrated into the families," she says. "From an economic point of view, we have tried to deal with all the red tape of meeting their needs, as much as we can, because social workers are mediators between families and institutions or agencies. We have given what we have. One example is the wheelchair that she needed for moving around, so that she wouldn’t be in bed for so much time. She now is on a special diet, because she is an underweight child, and she gets financial help from us."

"It’s difficult to work with disabled people, not because they’re different, but because they’re sensitive," Liannys noted. "She can’t see me, but she knows who I am. And that is a really big and gratifying achievement. She knows that I’m one of the people among her family members. She can’t talk, but she recognizes me when I talk. I’ve been involved now for seven years, and it goes beyond my job; this is my everyday life. Right now, it’s my full-time job."

Zedenia receives treatment at the Medical-Surgical Research Center (CIMEQ), and has physical therapy that allows her to control rigidity in her body and exercise her joints.

Problems at birth can affect people for the rest of their lives.

Twenty-year-old Jorge Pedro Merino Martínez is another physically disabled person who receives attention through the social workers program. Because of a delay during his birth, he suffered respiratory failure that left him disabled, and his health has been affected to the point of suffering heart problems and having organs that are not in place. He cannot express himself easily, although he can understand. He experiences convulsions and must take heavy doses of medicine.

Given this type of situation, sometimes mothers become desperate and abandon their children to their fate, and the possibility that someone else might care for them.

Hilda Rey, the woman who takes care of him, loves Jorge like one of her own children, and has done everything within her power to ensure that he lives the healthiest life possible.

"My husband and I get along very well, and I told him that with my help, maybe Jorge can get better someday, or develop like other human beings," she says. "I used to work in a laboratory and I had to leave my job."

According to Hilda, social workers have been "a blessing," because despite the attention she has always received from the Ministry of Public Health, these young people are more closely involved with their cases, and can mobilize themselves to make sure the person’s needs are met, even the most basic ones, given the current circumstances in the country.

The social worker who directly attends to Jorge, Yuneisy Pérez Moreno, says that it has not been easy for her, given that she had just graduated when she began having responsibility for these cases, doing a door-to-door survey for the Ministry of Public Health and then beginning systematic visits and care.

"I had never seen anything like it," she commented. "He really impressed me, and I had a lot of affection for him right away."

The labors of the social workers in this particular case have not only been of help to Jorge, but also for Hilda’s other children.

"I have two kids and with the help of the social workers, I was able to make sure the older one gets his lunch at school, and the younger one attends a childcare center during the day. It wasn’t the best thing to have him at home all day."

Becoming involved with a family dealing with these types of situations is a vocation. One must be very humane to be able to take on these realities. Becoming integrated as part of the family or a very good friend, instead of social workers who are just doing their job, is a talent. It is like being an ally of life. As Hilda says, "it’s not something you do just for the sake of it. It’s a question of what you have inside.

Source: Granma International, Cuba