Author: Slađan Tomić
For 12 years, the Association “Tračak nade” from Foča, as the only association of this kind in the region of Foča, Višegrad, Rudo and Goražde, has been providing assistance to children and young people with developmental disabilities. Although such persons existed before, they were completely invisible in their local community before the establishment of the Association.
While the system has no solutions for parents and children with difficulties, responsible, persistent, hard-working individuals prove that everything is possible, even for children who had been rejected until then and without adequate support, to create a corner where they are loved, accepted, where they have professional staff and therapy that help them develop. Jelena Vilotić from Foča proves, like parents all over BiH, that children with development difficulties or disabilities can be provided with much more than what the system does and (does not) provide. In Foča and the surrounding municipalities, children with disabilities have not had adequate support for years. More precisely, it didn’t even exist. Until 2010, when Vilotić started the “Tračak nade” Association.
“In the area of the Foča Municipality, the only institution that had data on this population was the Social Work Center. Parents who had a child with some kind of dissability did not have enough experience, did not know who to turn to and were left to fend for themselves. All these were sufficient reasons that motivated me to start the initiative to establish the Association“, recalls the founder and president of the Association Jelena Vilotić.
Last year alone, 17 employees of the Association provided 20,000 services to more than 100 families in the wider region. The importance of the work of this Association was also recognized by the local community, but the parents of children with disabilities know best what are the benefits of the Association’s work.
Biljana Lalovac is the mother of a young disabled person who has been a member of the Association since its establishment.
“The Association is of great help to my child, and to me as a parent. My child found her peace there, her friends and impatiently waits every new day to go to the Association. There are all the quality services of the professional staff of speech therapists, special education teachers, psychologists and others from the professional team of the Association, where she stays from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.“, Lalovac told to Local Works.
Lalovac says that it would be very difficult for her and her child without the Association.
“In it, they (users) found a second home, warmth, safety. Staying in the Association fills her day and she is full of impressions when she comes home. As a parent, I feel safe while my child stays in the Association and I can finish all obligations that requires my absence from home during that period“, says Lalovac about the benefits of the Association’s work.
More than 100 users need different support, and “Tračak nade” provides a wide range of services. From defectology, speech therapy, psychology to services provided by medical technicians.
“We take care of people with various psycho-motor difficulties aged from 3 to 70 years old. All of them are provided with some form of help and support. Younger users have continuous individual and group treatments. We provide families with psycho-social, informational-legal, economic and administrative help and support,” says Vilotić for Local Works.
The local community provides free space and financial support to the Association, which with its services relieves public health, but also public social services and institutions. In this way, the Association does the work of the state: better quality and cheaper, considering that they are financed with a smaller part from the budget, and more from donations and project funds.
Without this Association, the parents would also have additional expenses, and they did until the Association was established.
“Children and young people with developmental difficulties due to the lack of adequate institutions for providing treatment would have to go to Banja Luka and Sarajevo, while the elderly users would be isolated and limited to their own home,” says Vilotić about what would happen if this Association did not exist.
By inclusion and providing adequate care and services, “Tračak nade” provides help to a vulnerable group of the population to better fit into society, giving them a greater chance for success.
“I have a 19-year-old son who was injured at birth. Since then, my struggle to help and improve the lives of children and young people with difficulties in my local community and beyond has started in every possible way. My son is an inexhaustible inspiration for me, his success in overcoming everyday life obstacles as well as the success of all his friends“, the founder of the Association tells us about the motivation for many years of work.
For 12 years of working in the Association, she says that she is most proud of the fact that even her youngest fellow citizens know about the Association and what they do.
“That they should not shy away from our children or be afraid of them, but provide them with support and understanding whenever necessary, and they will reciprocate with sincere and unconditional love“, says Vilotić about this secondary but extremely important result of their work.
The benefit for the local community from the Association’s work is multiple, from continuous and free professional treatments, psycho-social assistance and support to families of people with developmental disabilities to economic empowerment of families.
“Informative and legal assistance and support for families, day care services, training and education of professional staff, expansion of the volunteer network, regularly updated database of persons with disabilities in the Upper Drina region, established cooperation with the governmental and non-governmental sectors… these are all the benefits of our work for local community“, says Vilotić.
Milica Lazivić is a professional associate at the Association, where she has been working as a defectologist for seven years. It is also her first job, her first chance, because this is where she did her internship.
Hundreds of children were given their first chance by staying at the premises of the Association because the educational system was neither inclusive nor capable of being dedicated to and including children with disabilities.
“The Association brings together 137 users, i.e. children with developmental disabilities and adults with disabilities. It is the only one of its kind in the Upper Drinska region. Apart from users from our local community, the services of the Association are also used by people with disabilities from other surrounding towns. Given that many children are not included in the school system or are excluded from it at some point in their education, especially after finishing elementary school. The Association provides those children the opportunity to spend part of their day involved in activities that we organize on a daily basis, which contributes to their development and strengthening of abilities and functionality,” says Lazivić.
Although she is the one who supports the users who make progress with her, she is also making progress by working in the Association.
“Working in the Association enabled me to experience working with children of different ages and abilities, develop my own capacities for working with the population we represent, and improve the various skills needed for teamwork, interpersonal relations and communication skills,” adds Lazivić.
“Tračak nade” is a place where everyone learns, grows and develops: users, children, parents, employees.
Helping and supporting others is the guiding principle of the employees, and they have extended their love for children and doing good for the local community, where it is very easy to find volunteers.
Adrijana Janković has been volunteering in the Association for two years. She is motivated by the fact that she helps someone, that someone sees her as a support. Motivation also creates the feeling of personal development.
“Volunteering fulfills me as a person. I am happier through volunteering and I learn a lot about values in life through this kind of work. My volunteer mission is to make people aware of who people with developmental disabilities are, that they are people first and that their disabilities do not prevent them from participating in society equally like everyone else, even though they sometimes need more time to master some actions due to the nature of the difficulty,” says Adrijana.
The lack of space – a problem for the Association’s work
Since 2012, the local community has been supporting the work of the Association, paying them the lease of the space where they work, financing part of the costs for salaries and contributions of professional and support staff, as well as part of current costs.
However, the work of this Association is not without problems. The spatial capacities in which they work are insufficient.
“One of the biggest problems we have is the unresolved issue of spatial capacities. We currently work in a rented space of 154 m2. Due to the large number of children and young people who need individual treatments, this is not enough because the number of children is constantly increasing. In addition, the staff who work with the users are financed through some of the project activities that we implement. Projects are limited in duration, so we are afraid that at some point we will run out of professional staff“, says Vilotić.
The life of children with development difficulties and people with disabilities, without this Association, would be completely different and their development would be stopped. Parents and the local community have recognized the importance of the Association, and we hope that those who can help them will continue to work as before or even better.
