The social integration of disabled people is the important task for policy making in Russia for
several reasons. Firstly, national disability rates have grown significantly since the beginning of
social and economic reforms in the early 90s of the last century. At the present time in Russia
about ten million people have disabilities and it seems that the proportion of disabled people in
the total population will continue to rise. Secondly, level of development of civil society in
Russia is associated with attitudes toward the disabled people and respect to civil rights of this
part of population. Thirdly, funding of disability benefits represent considerable part of federal
and regional budgets, and authorities are interested in developing more effective system of
social support for people with disabilities.
Social protection of disabled people is one of the priorities of social policy on the national and
local levels in Russia . The presentation will be done on the base of research data from the study
dealing with disabled people in St. Petersburg. According to the official data over 750 000
disabled people are registered in St. Petersburg on the date of 01.06.201 , which constitutes about
17 % of the total population of the city. Because St. Petersburg is a major financial, industrial,
cultural and educational center of Russia there are considerable resources for social supporting
of disable people. This fact means that problems of disable people usually are much deeper in
others Russian regions, and the research results could be important not only for St. Petersburg
but for different Russian regions.
The main research purposes were to find out how people with disabilities evaluate quality of
their lives and what kind of ways of social integrations should be developed in the nearest future.
The topic is critical for several reasons. Firstly, people with disabilities constitute a significant
proportion of the population of St. Petersburg. Secondly, In the past few years, the government
of St. Petersburg implemented several programs aimed at improving the quality of life for
persons with disabilities (creating an accessible environment, providing technical means of
rehabilitation and other rehabilitation services, social taxi, etc. ) However; despite this there are
many unsolved problems including related social integration of disabled people. Both the state
and private sector need to know the problems of working ages disabled people to develop more
effective system of social integration. Finally it’s important, the voices of disabled people
should be heard at the research about their lives.
The main point of the presentation states that at the present time disabled people of working
age are not enough integrated in the society. The state social policy, realizing in politics of
education, employment, social security, health, housing, information policy, is mainly based on
the medical model of disability . Although it is declared, that Russian social policy focuses on
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the independence of persons with disabilities, in practice there are many barriers to this
approach. There are a number of conflicts between disabled people, state, market and there is
still no effective mechanisms for resolving the conflicts and in many case for enforcement of
legislation against disability discrimination. In this context it is extremely important to take into
account the point of view of people with the limited possibilities. These circumstances have
determined the tasks and methods of the sociological research conducted in St.-Petersburg.
The main research method was interviewing of people with disabilities, which was carried out on
the basis of semi-structured questionnaire with a significant number of open questions. The
research aims were to find out the most significant problems of three main groups of disabled
people, namely people with disabilities of locomotor’s system, visually handicapped people and
people with poor hearing. For the purposes to have more objective knowledge concerning
research questions also 14 expert-interviews (with heads of non-governmental organizations,
specialists on rehabilitation, specialists in social work, etc.) were conducted in the framework of
the study.
The main conclusion is that in Russia today there are serious obstacles to realization by disabled
people their rights to education, work, welfare, that dramatically reduce the quality of life of
citizens with disabilities and aggravates social inequality. However, the expectations on
increasing the quality of life of disabled people connects predominantly with state and activities
of local government. Russian system of social support of people with disabilities causes a lot of
critics from the disabled people and experts. At the same time it is necessary to highlight
significant positive shifts initiated by government to improve the quality of social services for
people with disabilities and activization
of non-governmental organizations working with
disabled people, which play important role in advocacy of disabled people’s interests. Many
activities of St. Petersburg’ government have been positively evaluated by disabled people, in
particular improving transport service for disabled people, environment accessibility (rampant,
lifts, etc.), developing system of rehabilitation services, many respondents noticed that now
there is more attention to the disabled people from the state.
In order to overcome existing shortcomings public authorities should follow in practice the social
conception of disability and admit that disability is a reflection of social, technological and legal
aspects of society. The analysis of the research results allows arguing, that the medical model of
disability is still dominated in the sphere of social support in Russia. Now the main efforts of
public authorities in the field of social integration of disabled people are directed to the creation
accessible environment, i.e. the environment creating with taking into account of disable
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people’s needs. But today the accessibility is estimated only from the technical infrastructure’s
point of view. Social model of disability demands to evaluate accessibility by the criteria of
quality of life, level of social integration, and observation of human rights. With the social model
of disability, policy interventions aimed at increasing disabled people’s participation in social
and economic life should not be made only at the individual level but also at the societal level.
The significant changes in the field of social work are also needed. Social work besides the
traditional social services should pay more attention to empowerment of disabled people and to
develop the skills and capabilities of people with disabilities to live independent and manage
own life.
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