“The personal assistance – a guarantee for the right of people with permanent disabilities to live independent and dignified lives in the communities chosen by them.” So is entitled the analysis of the necessary financial resources for the implementation of the draft law on personal assistance. This is not a new type of social assistance, but rather a qualitatively different mechanism that will allow the disabled people to live independent living.

It turns out that if the main goals of the idea are preserved – the social inclusion of disabled people through empowerment and targeted funding based on individual needs assessment – the public resource needed to meet them will be one-tenth of that spent in 2009 year for institutional care (social homes, day care centers, etc.). However, the success of the endeavor depends on the political will to make unpopular legislative decisions, such as restricting the access of relatives to assistantships, introducing pre-service training for beneficiaries, providing personal assistance only to those who are willing to manage their lives and the support they need. Only under these conditions can the effect of money spent in the form of a higher quality of life, rather than a better quality of services, maintain the status quo of isolation and passivity.

Because the absence of Bulgarian experience, the hypotheses made for the purposes of this analysis are based on the documented experience – politically and historically – of the leading countries in this respect, such as Sweden, Norway, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and have been used to determine the number and the dynamics of users, the number of hours for personal assistance and the hourly rate for assistant-ships.

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