Not That We Choose Not to Put Them in Care... Selected, But Left Mocked

Even when handed a remote control, Person A shows no response.

[Turn on the TV and watch.]

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

Signs of household items, such as a door, being broken remain inside the house after exhibiting so-called "challenging behaviors" such as self-harm or harming others.

After more than 20 years of caregiving, the mother still worries anxiously about Person A occasionally being left alone at home.

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

With no proper care facilities available, the mother applied to the local government for the "Integrated Care Service for Individuals with Severe Developmental Disabilities," which was created for people like Person A, and received notice in March that Person A had been selected.

However, that marked the beginning of a continuous wait.

After waiting four months under the pretext of a lack of care personnel, she was told last July, just as a caregiver was barely found, 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 Jeonnam Center for the Developmentally Disabled (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 human beings, so just go die"?]

The caregiver who was hired with such difficulty has since quit again.

[Official at Hwasun County Office: (Is there any timeline for when hiring can take place?) We are in a situation where we have to wait for a job posting.]

There are about 800 individuals nationwide receiving this service for severe developmental disabilities, but statistics on those who, like Person A, have been selected as eligible but are still unable to receive the service are not being tracked.

Because the government fails to allocate sufficient budgets to local governments out of concern that funds might be left over, and because the budgets that can be used are fixed by each type of developmental disability care, local government budgets frequently run out 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 improve 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 by 16.9 billion won next year, but rigid "barriers" between care types remain, and the additional monthly allowance of 200,000 won for care workers is minimal, leaving it uncertain whether the caregiver shortage will be resolved.

No Staff or No Budget... "Developmental Disability Care" Stalled Indefinitely (September 3, 2026, 8 News)

(Reported by Park Ha-jung | Produced by Bae Jun-hwi | Filmed by Yang Hyun-chul | Edited by Park Na-young | Design by Seo Seung-hyun | Produced by SBS Digital News)
※ Please note: This article was translated by AI and may contain errors.