Life was a struggle for families of Ukrainians with disabilities before the war. It’s even harder now.
Halyna Chernyshova feeds a rice drink to Sasha Kharitonov in Slavutych, Ukraine. Sasha is her deceased daughter-in-law's son, and with the death of his mother he is left without any close relatives to care for him.Life was a struggle for families of Ukrainians with disabilities before the war. It’s even harder nowPublished March 28, 2023
His distant aunt, Lilia Seheda, wanted to take him in, but as the single mom of two children, it’s too much for her. Instead, she’d visit a couple times a day and help feed or change Sasha. Sometimes she’d read to him, watching his faint smile.and has had a particularly devastating impact on people living with intellectual disabilities and their families.
The place offers a chance to escape the war. There’s a forest and a river nearby and plenty of fresh air. And because the property is so remote there are no air raid sirens and — thanks to recently installed solar panels — no blackouts. The early days of the invasion were particularly challenging for the Klepets family. Maryna didn’t like going into the shelter and found the constant sounds of war very unsettling. There also wasn’t any signal in the basement, so she couldn’t listen to anything to distract herself. She spent one night just lying down, talking to herself.
Kravchenko said the chronic lack of support means many families face an almost impossible choice between placing their child in an institution or managing entirely on their own. CNN has repeatedly reached out for comment to several Ukrainian government departments and many residential facilities in the Kyiv region, but has not received answers to specific questions about the availability of services and funding.
Since Shevchenko’s mother died in 2016, he had been living on his own, getting help from carers paid by his nephew who lives in the United States. Halyna Pylypenko was one of them. She would come in the morning, help him get up, take him out for a walk or to a club for people with Down syndrome and spend the day with him. In the evening, she’d put him to bed, lock the door and leave.
Every weekend, Maksym’s father Yuri Kapustianskyi takes him on long walks to occupy and entertain him: Two hours in the morning, two hours in the afternoon. When the full-scale Russian invasion began, Kapustianskyi, a single dad who says his wife left him and Maksym eight years ago, walked five hours from his home to the boarding school where Maksym was staying Mondays to Fridays to pick him up and take him to safety.
Psychologist Olha Titorovska works with client Yaroslav Repich at BlahoDar, a Slavutych rehabilitation center for people with disabilities.“He was overdue and when he was born, it was immediately obvious that he wasn’t a healthy baby,” she told CNN.
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