personal assistance
Personal assistance is the provision of individual services that enable people with a disability to lead an independent and self-determined life.
description
Personal assistance gives people with disabilities the opportunity to shape their lives according to their own wishes, ideas and needs. Personal assistance includes all areas of daily life in which there is a need for support or assistance. This applies, among other things, to areas such as personal hygiene, everyday life, household support, mobility aid, administrative procedures, health promotion / maintenance and communication aid . This is intended to promote inclusion . Personal assistance is often a prerequisite for living in your own home.
The difference to conventional offers of help or social services is that with personal assistance, the initiative comes from those affected and they take the organization of their help into their own hands.
The model of personal assistance enables people with disabilities to take on basic skills for their assistance themselves:
- Personnel competence: the assistants themselves determine who provides the assistance. They conclude employment contracts with their assistants, prepare duty rosters, pay slips, pay taxes and social security contributions. The assistants are either employed by them directly (employer model) or by a service provider (e.g. assistants' cooperative). In this way, the assistants can also decide whether they would like to receive help from different people or providers or from a single source (differentiation skills).
- Instructional competence: The assistant users train their assistants themselves.
- Financial literacy: The assistants monitor the use of the financial resources they are entitled to, such as B. in Austria benefits from the Federal Care Allowance Act or in Germany from the personal budget of the integration assistance itself.
- Organizational skills: The assistants organize their daily routine according to their own requirements and wishes.
- Spatial competence: The assistants themselves determine where the assistance is provided (e.g. in their home, at work, at the vacation spot, when visiting friends or family members).
For the assistants there is no job-specific defined employment law framework and no union representation.
The self-determined life movement sees personal assistance as a central means for a self-determined life in all areas. It means a redistribution of power from the institutions to those affected. Personal assistance reverses the traditional balance of power between professional helpers and people with disabilities. That is why they often had to fight hard for the assistants against much resistance.
Examples
One form of personal assistance is work assistance in Germany or personal assistance at work (PAA) in Austria. The job assistance (Sections 33 and 102 SGB IX in conjunction with Section 17 SchwbAV) creates, for the first time in Germany, the possibility for people with disabilities to become employers of a workplace assistant in contrast to the amount of care required. This job assistance has to support the disabled employee in fulfilling his obligations under labor law .
The parental assistance supports mothers and fathers with disabilities in the care and welfare of their children ( § 4 para. 4, § 76 para. 2 no. 2 SGB IX). Disabled children and young people can use school attendants .
literature
- BIZEPS - Center for Self-Determined Living: Self-determined life with personal assistance. 2nd Edition. Vienna 2007. Download
- Birgit Drolshagen, Alexandra Franz, Eike Marrenbach and others: Handbook of self-determined living with personal assistance . Volume A: A training concept for assistants . AG-SPAK books, Neu-Ulm 2001, ISBN 3-930830-26-4 .
- Birgit Drolshagen, Alexandra Franz, Eike Marrenbach and others: Handbook of self-determined living with personal assistance . Volume B: A training concept for personal assistants . AG-SPAK books, Neu-Ulm 2002, ISBN 3-930830-29-9 .
- Conny Müller: Personal assistance. Compendium from practice for practice . Diplomica, Hamburg 2011, ISBN 978-3-8366-9881-8 .
Web links
- Aktion Mensch : Assistenz Familienratgeber.de, last updated: May 27, 2019
- Elke Bartz: 20 years of assistance. Disabled people on the way to more self-determination. ForseA , 2001, accessed June 12, 2008 .
- FAssiS - Swiss Assistance Unit - data processing , legal bases , political initiatives and the "Pilot experiment assistance budget 2006-2011" in Switzerland as well as an international outlook
- BSV - Pilot experiment assistance budget ( Memento from January 1, 2013 in the web archive archive.today ) - Official Swiss website of the Federal Social Insurance Office, Bern on the "Pilot experiment assistance budget 2006–2011"
Individual evidence
- ↑ These explanations are based on BIZEPS - Center for Self-Determined Living: Self-determined living with personal assistance. 2nd Edition. Vienna 2007 ( download the brochure ).
- ^ Horst Frehe: Personal assistance - politics in responsibility. Weeding out disabled people or living with equal rights? In: Inforum. 1, 2001 ( Download article ( Memento of the original from September 13, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ).
- ↑ ForseA (Ed.): 20 years of assistance. Disabled people on the way to more self-determination. Mullfingen-Hollenbach 2001 ( Download brochure ( Memento of the original from November 15, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this note. ).
