Perseverance
Lydia Handzova
?? IT Program Manager | Digital Transformation Leader ? ?? Speaker & Disability Advocate ? ?? Author @Dis-labelling ? ?? Driving Innovation & Inclusion
Last week in Pie??any, I met my childhood friend, who is a Paralympian—and a very successful one.
We talked about many things, including how care for children and people with disabilities has drastically deteriorated. I know that overall, things were quite bad during the Communist era. However, if we focus specifically on care for children with disabilities, especially physical ones, the contrast is striking.
Now, a single spa treatment costs thousands of euros, making it unaffordable for most families. To my knowledge, there are no longer any schools where children receive physical therapy as part of their education. Yet, for those with the most common disability—cerebral palsy—daily physical therapy is essential.
I didn’t attend one of these specialized schools, and looking back, that may have been a mistake. Not everyone did, and not everyone suffered from being in the standard school system. However, the likelihood of facing challenges is undoubtedly higher for children with disabilities compared to those without.
As a Paralympian, my friend told me that in countries like the Netherlands, Denmark, and the UK, professional athletes can focus solely on their sport—it’s what they are expected to master. In Slovakia, that’s still just a dream. My friend has to work a full-time job to support himself, train, and also manage his health. Yet, when he competes in the Netherlands, he still secures top placements—which makes me question the level of preparation of the Dutch team, haha.
We have a world-renowned spa in our country (currently owned by British royalty), and we achieve massive success in the Paralympics—yet almost no one knows about it, except those who actively seek the information.
We help people in need through platforms like Donio, but it’s disheartening that no meaningful school reform for children with disabilities has been successfully implemented since 1990. Despite advances in science and better treatment options, the situation continues to worsen.
One thing, however, remains true for all Slovaks: perseverance, no matter what.
What would you change to ensure children with disabilities have better access to care?
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4 天前Wondering how worked before. What was the power that ensured that the projects like schools, research, building new hospitals, large infrastructure projects, farming, industry was given enough priority, funding, and the right people trained to do that. Part of the answer might be the centrally planned economy and a "smaller world". We lived in a limited and controlled environment, easier to plan, while today there is free competition (survival of the fittest) happening globally across the world. Central planning could make decisions with higher impact that needed more resources, while now many people want many different things, so it gets more fragmented. And central planning worked with long term strategies which were really followed, while now nothing survives past the next elections. A very bad thing is that not even politicians rotate every few years. It's also the experts that are expected to run important institutions and areas. I've heard that in some other countries, political changes only impact politicians themselves - while the experts running the actual important activities in the country stay in their positions even if the government changes as they are there for their skills, not politics. Wish we could have that.