Pastrogor “madness” and misery Slavka KUKOVA
Is the ·reform” in the social care homes effective?
T
he road to Pastrogor village, Svilengrad municipality location of a home for women with mental disorders, is so bad that we are not sure if our car will make it. It is March 2, 2006, 11 am. An iron table and four chairs are fixed in front of the home’s entrance. They were probably meant for visits - we don’t know. On the other side of the fence, we see close to 20 women wandering purposelessly around the yard. Ragged, dirty and abandoned. Three of them come to welcome us, and most of all, to ask for a cigarette or 20 stotinki for coffee. The fuss attracts the nurses, who say that the home director is away, and they have to ask him for permission to let us in. The women remain with us and explain that they had been ill-treated (sometimes by the director) and that they do not like the medicines they get and the home in general. After a phone call to the director, we are allowed in. The women insist on contacting their relatives to see if they can come to take them away from the home. They follow us with this request for some time. They say that they are not allowed to phone their relatives. And this is happening during this grand ·re-integration” initiative. We enter the offices of the young and pleasant employees - we find out later that they are social workers. They give us martenitsi - traditional Bulgarian white-and-
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red thread decorations marking springtime - from a cupboard, claiming that they were made by the women as a form of therapy. Later we did not meet a single woman who had made such a martenitsa. The director Georgi Georgiev arrives in a hurry soon after our arrival. He invites us into his half-empty office. He says that they use it for therapy sessions once in a while. From the first part of the exchange, we understand that he has been the director for many years and after a break of two years, he had returned to the post. He did not know what happened at the home while he was away. The home has been inspected by the Ministry of Labour and Social Policy but no recommendations were issued. We ask him whether there had been any changes since 2003 when the Bulgarian Helsinki Committee recorded the extremely miserable living conditions at the home. The home accommodates 86 women with various mental illnesses and/or developmental disabilities. The home is a former army barracks with falling plaster and heating on woods or coals, baths without showers and only one outside toilet with four cubicles for all the women. From that 2003 visit we know that a new building had been built in the yard in 1992, but it is still unfinished and it is not used for the purposes of the home. The director explains that the view we are about to see is not very
pleasant. He says that he has heard from the local press that the Social Investment Fund will at last allocate the 360,000 leva [180,000 Eur] necessary to complete the new building in 2006. However, he adds that he had not received official confirmation of this. They managed to repair some of the rooms but this did not change the general situation. The social worker brings books and records. She shows us programmes for integration and occupational therapy of the women - cleaning, watching TV, and helping with housework are the main activities mentioned in it. We see that according to the programme, the women are taken to see a movie or a folk concert every month and to celebrate their birthdays. Now we understand why all the women at the entrance were saying that it was their birthday. That is the only time when they receive presents. We ask how many of the 86 women take part in these events. They say about 30, the not-so-complicated cases. We look at the accounting books. Close to 40 women receive pensions of 117 leva [58 Eur] and 80 per cent of the pension goes to the home. The rest of the women receive pensions ranging from 66 to 72 leva [33-36 Eur]. In this way, in the coldest winter month, January, the home managed to cover its expenses for heating, electricity, food, and cleaning materials solely from the residents’ fees. The state gives a mere 500 leva [250 Eur] extra and the staff salaries. We go out of the administration of the home and enter another world. Dark and smoky rooms, with women lying around, and who, the minute they see us, start making requests to leave the home. They ask us why they are at the home. Some do not even try to escape the trap that their relatives and social institutions had set for them. In each of the two buildings, there are five rooms with up to seven beds each. We go through the corridors, just washed with water but still covered with dust and faeces. In one of the rooms, there is no means of heating, but still two women are lying there. The nurse tells us that the room is not usually used, and that is why it is not heated. Around me there are women of various ages, with ragged clothes and mismatched shoes, worried eyes and shaking hands. They follow us and beg us to take them back to ·civilization”. They beg. I ask if they know about their pensions and that they had money. They answer that even if they knew, it would be of no use because whatever they buy will be stolen. I ask them if they use the new cupboards bought after the ·changes” and they show me that they are empty. The women carry everything under their shirts or in bags attached to them. The ones that are bedridden, about 40, are in serious condition. The beds are up against each another. The only place where you can stay is by the stove. I ask who put firewood in the stove and when, and receive no answer. It is cold. I see half-naked women sitting still and uncaring in their beds. I put a martenitsa in their hands and they do not want to let go. ·You are so warm,” one of them tells me. She is dressed only in a man’s shirt, unbuttoned, and wears no underwear. She must weigh
about 30 kg. Those who accompany me say that these were the ·fattest” women. Some complain that the orderlies beat them when they bath them or when they do not want to out certain clothes on that aren’t theirs or they don’t like. The orderlies that are standing next me do not even try to oppose these claims. The women ask the director and the staff when they are going to let them out. We see that unlike any other director of such a facility, this one does not communicate with the patients, just blushes and turns his head the other way, explaining to us how bad the situation is. We cannot understand why women with serious mental illnesses, who have spent their entire lives in institutions, are living together in the same room with 30year-old women who have been recently institutionalised, with fresh memories from the outside world. My first reaction, I hope you’ll pardon me, was ·madness”, but those who are allegedly mad are not the real mad people here. Yordanka from Saedinenie wants me to assure her that she will leave the home after she is cured. The staff had told her that someone had to come and pick her up. They referred to this someone as a ·guardian”. Yordanka, however, says that she did not have one and the only relatives she had left were her brother and sister-in-law, but they would not come to get her. It turns out that she is not legally incapacitated, she has no guardian, and that she signed the admission documents herself, not knowing what kind of a home she would be going to. When she finds out that she could leave any moment, she jumps out of the bed and starts packing. She wants a loan, money for the ticket. The director tells us listlessly that he had understood that the municipality had taken 90,000 leva [45,000 Eur] from the home’s allowance for 2004 for itself. During that time we see beds with dirty and torn mattresses, some with only one dirty sheet and some without sheets at all, usually the beds of the serious cases. The blankets are dirty and only one to a bed. In the most remote rooms we find around 10 half-naked and barefoot women. While we are in their room not one of the staff cares to give them something to wear. They do not speak and use only two gestures, to ask for a cigarette and to show that they want to go. The toilets are blocked with faeces. Other rooms do not exist. Nor does occupational therapy. Frankly speaking, I did not expect to see this five years after the international campaign at the home in Sanadinovo. Here we cannot even talk about a lack of money. Even a foreigner can understand that. Only one thought stays with me - absolute negligence and ignorance and criminal negligence. And still no one is guilty because the chain of responsibility again goes in a vague direction. Unfortunately the home in Pastrogor will be just one more place that I will remember with deep sorrow. At least until (if ever) Emilia Maslarova, Minister of Labour and Social Policy, responds to our alarm signal with urgent measures. OBEKTIV 13