It is estimated that there are 345,000 of them in Poland. Most of them – over 190 thousand. lives in cities. Parents with disabilities face enormous challenges. How do they cope with everyday life? With shopping, traveling, spending time with children, taking them to kindergarten or school? I am talking about this with Magdalena Beszczyńska-Kamecka, Ignacy’s mother.
Parent in the city: What was your prospect of walking around the city with a small child?
Magdalena Beszczyńska-Kamecka: In the case of my physical disability, moving around the city with my child required me to use elevators, low-floor buses and the kindness of other strangers, when I could not find an elevator or a footbridge for a pram . I was not able to bring a stroller with a child up the stairs on my own. I traveled very well on the subway which is accessible due to elevators (if they work).
My disability did not prevent me from reaching the places where healthy mothers reached the city.
The situation is completely different when mom is in a wheelchair – then the accessibility of the city from her perspective looks completely different. You need footbridges, low-floor buses, flat curbs, working lifts.
RwM: Will you share with us your experiences of preparing for childbirth and the time spent in the hospital? Have you received any help from midwives and doctors? Did the hospital infrastructure meet your needs?
M.B-K .: My preparation for the birth was as follows:
The district clinic did not undertake the pregnancy due to the lack of experience in managing patients with my health problems, and I was sent to the hospital. I was taken to a hospital clinic, where I was immediately qualified to conduct a threatened pregnancy under the constant care of a pregnancy pathology clinic in one of Warsaw hospitals. The care was of a high standard with a high level of staff involvement at least during pregnancy. However, care in the neonatal unit left a lot to be desired. Regarding the architectural adaptation, I have no opinion as I am not a wheelchair user.
In the case of mothers with disabilities, the hospital offer should be adapted to the type of mother’s disability. A mother looking for staff trained and experienced in the management of pregnancies in patients with her disabilities would be able to go to such a hospital. Such a database should be available on the city’s website: with information about which hospitals are prepared to handle pregnancies in patients in a wheelchair due to spinal injuries for various reasons, who are prepared to handle deaf patients, for whom midwives and supported doctors are prepared by a sign interpreter and institutions with experience in the management of pregnancies of blind patients.
A similar situation applies to birthing schools, which do not offer services aimed at women with various disabilities, e.g. for blind or deaf mothers who can give birth naturally. Usually, mums with spine injuries are directed to caesarean section, but the offer of birthing schools should be adapted to different types of disability, for example in terms of learning to care for a small child.
Due to the lack of an offer of such birth schools, I did not use their services – an additional argument was the fact of the planned solution in my case by caesarean section.
RwM: What do you find most troublesome about using the city?
M. B-K .: At the moment I have no major problems with using the city’s offers due to the fact that my son is already 9 years old and is independent,
On the other hand, from my own research, I know that using the city space in winter is much more difficult for mothers in wheelchairs or with walking problems who suffer from cerebral palsy. For such mothers, a sidewalk that is not snowed in winter or a snowdrift is an insurmountable obstacle and we have “bonds at home” with their children.
RwM: Can you find places that allow you to spend time comfortably with your child, e.g. playgrounds that are adapted to the needs of parents with disabilities?
M. B-K .: In my case, my disability did not limit me in using the playgrounds offered. The problem arises with mums in wheelchairs unable to use the sand or gravel playgrounds.
Moms who simply have a significant problem with walking, e.g. with cerebral palsy, who also have to have a flat, even surface to move around, and not gravel, sand or uneven pavement, may also have a problem with sand …
RwM: What difficulties do you have to face now as a mother of a school-going child?
M. B-K .: The architecture of the building which my son is visiting is not a problem for me – maybe the question of an unused elevator, which is not working and cannot be used to go to the 2nd floor.
RwM: You are a working mom. Do you manage to maintain the balance you want in your work and being a mother? Does your employer facilitate this task?
M. B-K .: I am currently employed ¾ full time, which allows me to work from Monday to Thursday. With free Friday. Despite working 4 days a week, the reconciliation of professional work with my son’s extracurricular activities, own rehabilitation and homework system is very difficult and without my husband’s help I would not be able to do it. Due to health limitations, my health condition requires me to rest from 8.00 p.m. – then the husband takes over the evening rituals.
The employer made my job easier by shortening my job and having the right to work 7 hours a day, which is due to my degree of disability.
RwM: If you were to identify the three greatest, most pressing needs of parents with disabilities, what would it be? (I am asking for legal and infrastructural solutions).
- Introduction of the term parent with disability to the Act on social assistance and foster care, in which acts will extend the scope of forms of assistance provided by family assistants, so that the Family Assistant can be assigned to the family, in which parents have disabilities (both or one of them) and the assistant, for example: pushes and brings children from kindergarten, nursery, school, does homework with them, helps the mother or both parents to run the house, do shopping, help or assist in caring for child / children.
- Creating an act similar to the ‘act for life’ for parents with disabilities, defining the needs of this group and adjusting the support offer. In Poland, no reliable research has been done on the number of households created by parents with disabilities who bring up children. A system of subsidies for housing, preferential loans, creating a network of personnel supporting the functioning of such families. The needs of families created by the blind are different, and others by deaf people, and others by people in wheelchairs.
- Including in all programs created for people with disabilities the parent with a disability category, taking into account its specific needs, incl. in programs of the city such as “Warsaw program of activities for people with disabilities for 2010-2020”, programs of the State Fund for People with Disabilities PFRON or government programs such as “accessibility plus” or “Act for Life”.
Magdalena Beszczyńska-Kamecka – a graduate of the University of Warsaw at the Faculty of Sociology, where she defended her master’s thesis entitled: “The road to motherhood of disabled women in Poland”, one of the protagonists books by Marta Dzbeńska-Karpińska “Mother Mężne czy Szalone”, the author of one of the chapters of the guide for people with disabilities “Parenting without limits”, created in cooperation with the PFRON and the Institute of Public Affairs in Warsaw. Professionally associated with EU projects. Privately, wife of Krzysztof and mother of 9-year-old Ignacy. “Life and people are my passion. I have a severe disability. ”