Elena Popova: «The next 5 years disabled people will be living much better”

Tribuna’s guest is Elena Popova, Senator of the Volgograd Region, a member of the Federation Council Committee on Social Policy. Together with Vladimir Nesterov, she discusses social policy, including the governmental support of disabled people.

- For a long time in our country, the words 'disabled person' have sounded more like a death sentence or a huge challenge. If we talk about the people who do not have congenital disabilities but have acquired ones, it is probably an even more difficult test for them. That is, a person needs both psychological assistance and a number of measures to allow him to remain in society. What kind of support is being provided for disabled people now?

- There are a lot of problems, but the shift in addressing these issues is also huge. We are very grateful that the program 'Accessible Environment' will be extended because it is a financial resource for the regional programs, the implementation of which in the framework of the signing of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, we are beginning in each region. When regions say that they cannot do it, they don't have any possibility, there's probably a not very far-sighted policy of the authorities.

If a dissability is a congenital disease, we have to deal with early intervention in the family. And today we are very pleased that a great working group is working at the Ministry of Education, which is developing a mechanism to assist the family at the stage of prevention. We do not put a mother in a situation that she had already given birth to a disabled person. We are starting at the planning stage of pregnancy, with early intervention interacting with these mothers at risk.

We have finally stopped considering children with limited possibilities of health in the overall figure. We had a problem when we did not know how many hearing and visually impaired children we have in the regions, how many tiflo- and surdo- translators we needed. We did not know how many budgetary places we should leave for training specialists, because a rural teacher and oligosaccharides, a surdo-, freno- teacher is a different specialty.

Today, as part of the Federal government program to all children with disabilities, we started  to form a base in every region and we go to specific numbers. And now we have the opportunity to defend the number of correctional schools that are, well, not yet, were shut down in the region, for the most part, we left them, and now we have a  reason not just leave these schools, and to expand where necessary, or to extend the number of classes in conventional specialized schools. That is, since the state policy started correctly from the beginning, we have the basis for the formation, possibly, of some new government programs to support people with limited possibilities of health and people with disabilities. 

In the framework of the Rehabilitation of the Disabled, there is an interaction with the federal rehabilitation centers, which have the ability to take such a category, which have a much better financial base, because they were created at the time as the federal center and they are better staffed than the regional ones. Accordingly, their opportunities are bigger and wider now. 

The program "Accessible Environment" in the complex of activities of the regional programs allows such additional replenishment to be carried out, a source in the regional budget. Federal state educational standards are established for children with certain illnesses in primary school. We have provided complete sets of textbooks, where they are appropriate, accompanying the tutors, who should be near the child during the educational process. 

The program "Accessible Environment" allows us to create a roadmap for medical and educational institutions for training. We do not limit parents who give their child to a mainstream educational institution, but we have to realize that tomorrow a special environment for the child in the classroom and the school will not appear. In some areas Ombudsmen for the Disabled are working, who with the legislative and the executive branch are now working with an entirely new set of documents, which did not exist before. 

We are going to finish the registry of children with limited possibilities of health, which will serve as the basis for the formation of the quotas of the same budget places in the regions, and in the federal universities, so that we can provide training of tutors, the so-called classroom assistants, who will work within the concept we have for each child with a disability or limited possibilities of health. 

Recently, in Voronezh a forum was held on the problems of children with autism, there was a forum in Pskov. A huge protocol, 10 applications to the protocol, were applied in the framework of the recommendations of the Government and various ministries. This is a new job, it did not exist before. The public is now taking such an active part in the development of these new programs, and yet, we hope that people with disabilities and limited possibilities of health, both children and adults in the Russian Federation for at least the next 5 years will be living much better than they were living 5 years ago.

- From time to time we have such a question: a number of deputies in the State Duma proposed that Volgograd be renamed Stalingrad. Of course, there were a lot of motivations. But one of them is that the name of the hero-city of Volgograd does not sound right. How do you think, does it make sense to rename the city back?

- Residents of the Volgograd Region actually know the three names of the city. The first name was Tsaritsyn. Then the city was named Stalingrad. And the name of the city today is Volgograd. Indeed, this question is asked very often before each period of elections. Every five years, the Communist Party raises this question on the agenda. The City Council made such a decision: during significant commemorative events for the entire world, the official name of Volgograd is Stalingrad. Therefore, we don’t consider that this fact belittles the dignity of our soldiers who visit our city. All the events for the elderly are carried out under the auspices of Stalingrad. 

We carried out a monitoring with the help of public organizations – the majority of the younger generation of residents of Volgograd choose the original name of the city – Tsaritsyn. We remember and know only those patrons and benefactors who lived before and after the revolution. All they and their names are tied with the name of Tsaritsyn. We have a history book in our museum, where names of patrons are recorded according to their financial contributions, as well as the historic structures that they built.

Stalingrad, Volgograd and Tsaritsyn. We know all three names. We believe that our children should know the history of each generation of our city, because we have worthy representatives at every stage of the formation and development of our city. The city has existed for 459 years, we are to celebrate a jubilee soon. And we see that we have seven national parks in the context of the development of internal and external tourism, which were built in the Volgograd region. They are partly coordinated with the name of Tsaritsyn. So it would be unfair to say in general that we like the name of Stalingrad only. We have already been proclaimed by the governor of the Volgograd region as the center of spiritual, moral and patriotic education. Now we are planning to include natural parks and external tourism in the centers of our spiritual and moral education. They also began with Tsaritsyn. We have a careful attitude towards the history of our region. Every step of each name of the city is always told for all tourists. 
So we like the name of Volgograd. It is associated with the name of the river. A new stadium is being constructed on the bank of the Volga River. Therefore, it seems to us that everything is developing extremely harmoniously.