Abstract
In the present article, I aim to answer the questions: what is the situation of children with disabilities and their parents in the healthcare system in Lithuania? Are they discriminated against? If discrimination against children with disabilities persists, what is its manifestation? Is it possible to see a link between discrimination against children with disabilities and attitudes towards parents of children with disabilities? These and other similar questions reflect the scientific problem of the article. The research questions are concretized by the research object – expression of discrimination of children with disabilities and their parents in the Lithuanian health care and related systems. The findings of the research prove that there are cases when children with disabilities experience discrimination in the Lithuanian health care system. The expression of discrimination against children with disabilities and their parents is related to: open disregard of the child and his/her mother, which escalates into an underestimation of the child as a person; neglect of infants from children’s home in the hospital; unequal treatment conditions for children with different disabilities; discrimination against children with intellectual disabilities in access to dental treatment; irresponsible administering or not administering medicines to children with disabilities; together with children, their mothers are also discriminated against; low-quality services that violate the dignity of the child and the family. Not only children with disabilities but also their parents can face discrimination in the health care system.
Highlights
The concept of discrimination is common when it comes to disability, both at the scientific, practical and domestic levels
I divided the episodes of conversations into semantic subtopics referring to my personal perception
At the beginning of the research, I named the subtopic “discrimination” more intuitively than argumentatively. At this stage of the research, I did not delve deeply into the philosophical, legal, social and other perspectives of the term “discrimination” in any special way, I compared my perception with the interpretations of the three online dictionaries: Cambridge1; Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary2 and Lithuanian Language Dictionary3
Summary
The concept of discrimination is common when it comes to disability, both at the scientific, practical and domestic levels. In the aspect of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, it has become clear that the expression of discrimination is inseparable from the disregard for the provisions of the preamble on equal opportunities for all children (for example, neglect of infants from children’s home; different treatment conditions in the neurological unit, where children with intellectual disabilities are usually admitted, and conditions in the unit for children with oncological diseases); lack of awareness of the importance of family participation and involvement (for example, the case when the mother is not consulted with about prescribing sedatives or disregard for the mother’s requests to refer for specialist consultation) It infringes Article 3 of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which expresses respect for the identity of the child with a disability (the analysed example when a doctor underestimates a child with a disability, does not plan his future, does not send him to specialists or the narratives about irresponsible administering of medicines, or the examples revealing poor quality services in the health care system, the expression of which violates the dignity of the child and his or her family). The examples analysed show that even the high social status of parents raising a child with a disability does not prevent discrimination (cf. Bauer, 2014)
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