You can’t talk… – Moskovskaya Pravda

You can’t talk, communicate, walk, even eat… You don’t understand this world, and it rejects you. You are autistic. How to live?

Who are autists? In appearance, ordinary people, but with peculiarities of perception of the world around them. Autism is manifested, first of all, in a delay in the development of a person and in his unwillingness to make contact with others. The main problems of a person with autism are catastrophic thinking, poor impulse suppression, obsessive thoughts, anxiety, and the inability to rehabilitate in their family. What does a person with autism want? Live in your home, in the family, study, work. Simple desires, but at present there is no solution to the problems of the vital needs of disabled adults outside of stationary institutions.

Today, according to WHO, every eighty-eighth child in the world is born with autism. Thousands of people in our country live with mental disorders and need help.

Over the past decade, the level of autism in the world has increased 10 times. According to the Ministry of Health, over the past 5 years, the detection rate of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) has increased in Russia by more than 2.5 times.

The main challenge of the epidemic autism is not in pills or vaccines, but in the fact that a person needs a person. No technology and science can replace live communication and support. Families cannot cope with autistic people on their own; specialists, teachers, and methods are needed.

For young children with developmental disabilities in our country, there are already opportunities to engage and study in schools (although there are still many problems). Adults with developmental disabilities have absolutely nowhere to go. At best, they sit at home, which makes families with special adults very lonely and unhappy.

In such cases, autistic people become a heavy burden for their own families, especially for parents who dedicate their lives to caring for their sick children and think with horror about their fate after their death, since these powerless disabled people are recognized by the state as incompetent, deprived of their own housing. Indeed, today adult autistics have only one prospect – a psycho-neurological boarding school (PNI), the purpose of which is to protect a “healthy” society from “problem” people with developmental disabilities, and these people, living out their lives alone, quickly degrade and die.

The currently existing methods of correcting the development and socialization of autistic people in state institutions are divorced from the real needs of adult autistic people and their parents, in addition, there is an acute shortage of qualified personnel.

At the moment, scientists have come to the conclusion that many autistic people (by some estimates, one in three) have some kind of outstanding ability. Among them there are already programmers, designers, musicians, in general, successful and accomplished people. Therefore, employers are now faced with the task of finding a use for such extraordinary minds, even if these talents are people with a difficult character. The global trend of increasing specialization and the growing demand for experts in science, technology, engineering, programming and mathematics suggest that the need for autistic employees will increase in the coming decades. Then they will raise their natural abilities to a new level and be able to realize them. You just need to help them with this. Accept them for who they are in society. As equal citizens, while providing the necessary support in the form of social assistance, training, and employment. People with autism can make significant developmental progress with the right training. The sooner corrective work with them is started, the better the result will be.

Today in Russia there are over 400 Orthodox organizations that help children and adults with disabilities. The Church is involved in creating assisted living projects for people with disabilities. Such social and church initiatives are already working in Livny, Penza, New Moscow, Yaroslavl, Murom, Leningrad, Orenburg, Orel, Ivanovo regions.

Temple of the Kazan Icon of the Mother of God in the village of Puchkovo, near Moscow, is implementing the social project “House of Special People” – an educational and rehabilitation center for day care, training and rehabilitation of adults with disabilities with autism – a special boarding house for a long stay.

This house, a real island of salvation, was built for people with autism in the village of Puchkovo by the Road of Mercy church foundation. This is the only place in Moscow and the Moscow region, and one of the few places in Russia where people with severe non-contact, speechless autism and other mental disorders learn to communicate, speak, eat, live, accompanied by tutors. The “House of Special People” is an alternative to a neuropsychiatric boarding school.

The rector of the temple, Archpriest Leonid Tsarevsky, began to help people with the most complex forms of autism and created the Road of Mercy foundation with like-minded people. It all started with our own experience – autism was diagnosed in the eldest son of Father Leonid: “When our“ House of Special People ”was created, we did not even suspect how many people would later turn to us and how many parents would need help with their adult autistic children” – Father rector notes.

Within the framework of the project, since April 2015, regular classes began on the programs: therapeutic exercises, drawing, needlework. At the center, adults with disabilities with autism are helped to acquire useful skills and abilities that will make life easier for them and their loved ones. For the first time in domestic practice, the Center uses its author’s Program for the Comprehensive Rehabilitation of Adult Disabled Persons, based on the methods developed by domestic specialists, taking into account the methods used in foreign practice.

The main objective of the project is to help people with this form of disability not to degrade, not to “fall out of the world”, but to gain communication skills with each other and the world around them, help them realize their mental, creative abilities, and provide them with spiritual support. The goal of the project is to draw public attention to the problems of autistic people in order to provide them with all possible assistance, to organize their education and rehabilitation, and most importantly, to act on the basis of the interests of an autistic person, creating an atmosphere of love around a person.

In the house special people learn to communicate with teachers and among themselves, to speak, to express their requests, to master simple everyday skills, to develop physically, spiritually and creatively. Here, a speech pathologist, a psychologist, a teacher of adaptive physical education work with people with autism. The work is carried out in cooperation with the Center for Curative Pedagogy, one of the most authoritative organizations in Russia, which has been providing assistance to people with developmental disabilities for more than 20 years, with specialists from the Regional Public Organization for the Social and Creative Rehabilitation of Children and Youth with Developmental Disabilities Krug and others organizations.

Since April 2015, at the Orthodox school at the temple, the Center has been conducting regular classes for special adult young people according to the programs: therapeutic gymnastics, music therapy, classes in integrated (mixed) theater groups, drawing, hippotherapy, needlework (thread weaving, weaving). If earlier people with autism could only come to short-term classes, now in Puchkovo there are not only workshops where specialists work with people with autism, but also cozy living rooms. The House of Special People is a training and rehabilitation center, a special home-type boarding house for long-term stays of disabled adults with autism.

Here, adults with disabilities with autism will be helped to gain useful knowledge and skills that will make life easier for them and their loved ones. And in the future, the center will support autistic people in life, provide them with assistance and support in finding employment. The maximum number of people with disabilities will receive the service of supported employment. Part of the jobs will be created at the Center itself on the basis of training workshops. The staff of the Center will select jobs for other autistic people in organizations and enterprises.

The plans include the creation of creative theatrical, dance and musical groups with a mixed composition of disabled and non-disabled people, as well as organization of creative workshops: ceramic, sewing, art. The world of creativity, fantasy, development of the imagination is not a luxury for this category of people with disabilities, but practically the only opportunity for them to enter the world of culture, society, to become a person.

The development of the project “House of Special People” is caused by an urgent need. In the day care center for adult autistics, it is planned to increase the number of permanently trained and rehabilitated disabled people up to 10 people, as well as up to 300 people per year visiting the center for consultations and training on individual programs. The work of the center gives hope for the future to thousands of other people with special needs. It is necessary to give a chance to every person with special needs to become in this world a creatively realized and demanded person with the possibility of employment.

Mikhail Kovalyov.

Photo of the author.