Shortage of Staff and Budget Delays Care Services for Persons with Severe Developmental Disabilities

[Anchor]

The government has been providing specialized care services to ease the burden on families caring for individuals with severe developmental disabilities. However, families in desperate need of help are facing situations where they are left waiting for months after applying for the services.

Reporter Park Ha-jeong investigated why this is happening.

[Reporter]

Person A shows no reaction even when a remote control is placed in their hands.

[Turn on the TV and watch it.]

He is a 29-year-old with a developmental disability living in Hwasun, South Jeolla Province.

Traces of household fixtures, such as doors, being broken after displaying so-called challenging behaviors like self-harm or aggression toward others still remain inside the house.

Despite over 20 years of caregiving, the mother still worries anxiously whenever Person A is left alone at home.

[Mother of Person A: People around me say, 'Why don't you send him to a facility?' But there are actually no facilities that can take him. They won't accept him because he cannot manage bodily functions or personal hygiene.]

With no suitable care facilities available, the mother applied to the local government for the "Integrated Care Service for Persons with Severe Developmental Disabilities," which was created for individuals like Person A, and was notified in March that she had been selected.

However, what followed was a continuous wait.

After waiting four months under the pretext that there was no care staff, she was told this past July, when staff was finally secured, that the budget had run out.

[Mother of Person A (Phone call last July): Are you playing with people? Then you shouldn't have created such a service in the first place. Are you mocking us?]

[Official at the South Jeolla Developmental Disability Support Center (Phone call last July): I'm afraid I have to tell you that you will need to go back on the waiting list.]

[Mother of Person A (Phone call last July): Are you telling us you're useless humans, so just go die?]

The care worker who was recruited with such difficulty has since quit again.

[Official at Hwasun County Office: (Is there any schedule for when recruitment will happen?) We are in a situation where we have to wait for a public notice.]

There are about 800 persons with severe developmental disabilities receiving this service nationwide.

Statistics on those who have been selected as eligible like Person A, yet remain unable to receive the service, are not being tracked.

Because the government does not allocate sufficient budgets to local governments out of fear that funds might be left over, and because the budget restricted for use is fixed by each type of developmental disability care, local government budgets are frequently depleted early.

[Kim Mi-ok / Professor, Department of Social Welfare, Jeonbuk National University: What if we ease the barriers so that budgets can be used flexibly across different types? We need to enhance the completeness of the system into one centered on users that alleviates the caregiving burden on families.]

The government has decided to increase the related budget for next year by 16.9 billion won, but rigid boundaries between care types remain, and the additional allowance received by care workers is only 200,000 won per month, leaving it uncertain whether the care shortage will be resolved.

(Photo: Yonhap News)
(Reported by Yang Hyun-chul | Video by Park Na-young | Graphics by Seo Seung-hyun)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.