A team from Center for Independent Living evaluated the assistance’s services for people with disabilities in Bulgaria. The summary of the assessment you can download from here, and the full text of the report, together with the annexes, you can download from here.
The evaluation examines the schemes of “personal assistant” and “social assistant” in terms of social model, independent living and community life, using the Swedish model of personal assistance as the “gold standard”. The main conclusion of the analysis is that the assessed schemes put disabled users in a passive, subordinate and dependent position and do not effectively address, and in some cases even intensify the problems of dependence and social exclusion that disabled people in Bulgaria face. The main recommendation of the evaluation is to develop an alternative national personal assistance policy that follows the principles of the social model, independent living and community life. This requires the adoption of a law on personal assistance and the provision of adequate institutional mechanisms for its implementation.