Disability Social Work Service helps over 1,000 families

In a society which is crying for more social workers, the Disability Social Work Service, run by Appogg, struggles to lend people with disability a helping hand.

Andrew Azzopardi, service area leader, told The Sunday Times last week that the team has been in touch with over 1,000 families since 1996. The service was one of the very first units of the then Social Welfare Development Programme (SWDP). At the time, very little social work was offered to people with disability. So the service is, one could say, practically new.

Apart from Andrew, the team consists of Ronald Balzan, administrative support worker, Sylvana Farrugia, psychology officer, and three social workers. Each member tackles an average caseload of 40 families at one go.

"Our brief is to work with all types of disability. But the issue is not the disability. The issue is the issue per se. When we come into contact with a family, we don't specify the disability. This is the least of our concerns.

"We deal with particular issues, like employment and networking. We don't emphasise the impairment but we try to improve the quality of life of a person or a family. There could be families with children with serious disabilities who fair well and cope marvellously. There could be others who, by our standards, should cope easily but don't," Mr Azzopardi said.

The issues the team tackles are varied, ranging from early intervention support: families who have just had a baby born with disability to the networking of support in schools. The social workers also help institutionalised people with disability reintegrate into the community. Families facing marital problems due to the pressure of the disability.

The team is currently working with almost 350 families and this year it has had an average of 200 new families.

The support is truly wide and the Disability Social Work Service is one of the unique services which deals with all areas of disability. However, it is a mostly unpublicised service, the main reason being a lack of human resources.

Its caseload is enormous and social workers sometimes need to focus on one particular case. One social worker is currently working with the mother of a severely disabled boy who has an additional serious problem - she owes money to usurers.

It is imperative the social worker works with the mother, who just had an overdose, for long stretches of time. When there is a particular crisis point, the social worker must dedicate all the necessary time to the case.

A study recently conducted by the members of the Disability Social Work Service revealed that almost 60 per cent of people with disability who ask for help work closely with members of the service from two to six years.

Mr Azzopardi said the service didn't only work with people whose lives were damaged, like a boy who got beaten or someone from the Cottonera area who didn't have a home.

"We work with a minority; we work with people who talk about civil rights. People with disability are a minority and are being continuously discriminated against.

"Disability, together with, perhaps, mental health, are two areas which very often lie at the bottom of the heap. It is much more popular to give resources to services provided for children and the elderly. People with disability are very often relegated," Mr Azzopardi added.

The service also works very closely with other support groups. In fact, what it does is help organised groups who work with families with disability. In this way, it can reach more people in a shorter time.

"We train families to develop certain advocacy strategies, adopt pressure strategies on the services available, how to ask for help, how they can talk to other families in the same situation. All this is offered in outreach programmes run by the service. The idea is to reach more families through a number of other families.

A programme which lasted a few weeks was also recently run by Ms Farrugia for siblings of children with disability who unfortunately encounter psychological problems and go through rough patches themselves.

From a degenerative condition like multiple sclerosis to cerebral palsy, the Disability Social Work Service tries to give the best quality of life. The difficulties of families to cope with the reality of disability are many.

Hopefully, with the help of this much sought-after service, families can see that ray of light in their lives. The message is that it is the families who need this service that make the service.

Appogg Disability Unit can be reached on 2144-1273 or 2144-2121 E-mail: disability@ appogg.org