Supporting people with a disability at the regional level in Flanders as part of Belgium: In Flanders, persons with disabilities (PwD) can enjoy all kinds of interventions and financial allowances to help reduce the additional costs of their disability, and they can use organized care and support, or receive funds to organize this care and support themselves. However, in Belgium, the competences for these allowances and support forms are divided between different levels, since Belgium is a federal state: So, Interventions are therefore given from the federal government, or from the Flemish government. At the federal level, we can mention for example intervention in medical costs, and intervention in the purchase of mobility aids, given from the National Social Security Institute (Riziv).
Another important provider of financial support at the federal level is the Federal Public Service for Social Security. They deal with providing the allowance as a replacement for income, and the allowance in function of integration into society. At the regional level, and speaking for Flanders, several specific measures are foreseen in the fields of employment, education, childcare, culture and leisure, and of course: welfare.
Mainly speaking, the measures from Welfare, Public Health and Family Ð who are under the jurisdiction of our hosting minister today Jo Vandeurzen – deal with the Flemish system for Social Protection, youth care, and Ð the theme we apply for in this form – the care and support for Persons with a Disability. The Flemish Agency we represent, not only intervenes in the purchase of aids and adjustments to the home of people with disabilities, but is mainly responsible for the care and support for minor and adult PwD. In concrete terms, our Agency mainly provides the following measures with regard to persons with a disability: financial support for indicated devices, and for modifications to the home environment (for both minor and adult PwD), directly accessible care and support (for minors and adults), and not directly accessible care and support. Regarding the not directly accessible care and support we focus on in this application form, one must actually make a distinction between minors and adults: for minors: the Personal Assistance Budget (PAB) and guidance, daycare and accommodation within a Multifunctional Center (MFC); for adults: (mainly) a Person-following Budget (PFB), and some forms of direct financing of social services for restricted target groups.
How support was being organized during the last decades: For many decades, and just into the recent past, services Ð so called Ôservice providersÕ – and facilities in Flanders were recognised for providing a specific type of support. This support was broken down into types or categories of traditional care, like (semi-)boarding schools, homes for workers and non-workers, day centres, sheltered housing, assisted living, etc. Over the few past years, all these facilities for minors and adults have been transformed into a Flexible Provision for Adults (FAM) on the one hand and Multifunctional Centres (MFC) for minors on the other. The FAM and MFC organisational models allowed more customised support to be provided to people with disabilities. Nowadays, even this model of support has been almost completely abandoned, and the transition to a system of individual funding of the PwD themselves has been almost fully implemented, speaking for the adult PwD. Various motives lay at the basis of this total change: the international trend to move away from an institutionalized disability policy and to focus on individual forms of financing; the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, focusing on Article 19 on the right to independent living; the ultimate aim to eliminate waiting lists in the domain of care and support for PwD; the right of self-determination of the person with a disability with the possibility of self-directing the needed care and support.