{"id":65024,"date":"2014-11-14T08:59:31","date_gmt":"2014-11-14T08:59:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/4cd.e16.myftpupload.com\/?p=65024"},"modified":"2014-11-14T09:42:14","modified_gmt":"2014-11-14T09:42:14","slug":"the-disabled-children-in-greece-locked-up-in-cages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/2014\/11\/the-disabled-children-in-greece-locked-up-in-cages\/","title":{"rendered":"The disabled children in Greece locked up in cages"},"content":{"rendered":"
Disabled people in Greece are often stigmatised and can struggle to get the support they need. Some disabled children who live in a state-run home are locked up in cages – staff say they want to improve conditions but money is short.<\/p>\n
Nine-year-old Jenny stands and rocks backwards and forwards, staring through the bars of a wooden cage.<\/p>\n
When the door is unlocked she jumps down on to the stone floor and wraps her arms tightly around the nurse. But a few minutes later she allows herself to be locked back in again without a fuss.<\/p>\n
She is used to her cage. It’s been her home since she was two years old.<\/p>\n
Jenny, who has been diagnosed with autism, lives in a state-run institution for disabled children in Lechaina, a small town in the south of Greece, along with more than 60 others, many of whom are locked in cells or cages.<\/p>\n
Fotis, who is in his twenties and has Down’s syndrome, sleeps in a small cell separated from the other residents by ceiling-high wooden bars and a locked gate. His cell is furnished only with a single bed. There are no personal possessions in sight anywhere in the centre.<\/p>\n
“Are we going on a trip?” is this wiry young man’s hopeful refrain whenever he sees anyone new. But with barely six members of staff caring for more than 65 residents there is rarely an opportunity to leave the centre.<\/p>\n
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Some of the wooden partitions have been painted in bright colours<\/div>\n
In the small staff room, an array of closed circuit TV screens flicker, permanently tuned into the large wooden boxes that dominate the upstairs rooms.<\/p>\n
The poor conditions first came to the attention of the authorities five years ago when a group of European graduates spent several months at the centre as volunteers.<\/p>\n
Catarina Neves, a Portuguese psychology graduate was among them.<\/p>\n
“On the first day there I was completely shocked\u2026 I could never have imagined that we would have this situation in a modern European country but I was even more surprised that the staff were behaving like it was normal,” she says.<\/p>\n
The volunteers wrote up their experiences in a document that they sent to politicians, European Union officials, and every human rights and disability rights organisation they could find. Occasionally they received replies thanking them for their email without any promise of action but mostly they were ignored.<\/p>\n