New disability assessment system to be introduced in Armenia
YEREVAN, January 30. /ARKA/. Some 193,086 citizens with disabilities, including 9,327 children, were registered in Armenia as of January 10 this year. Deputy Minister of Labor and Social Issues Tatevik Stepanyan said at a press conference on Monday.
She said 9,798 people had 1st degree disability, 64,922 people had the 2nd and 109,339 had the 3rd degree disabilities.
Stepanyan said that starting from February 1, 2023, the current medical and social assessment of people who apply for disability assessment will be replaced with functional capacity assessment, which will involve identifying the abilities and inabilities of an individual.
The deputy minister specified that records of the state of health of such citizens will be drawn up without the identification of citizens, and then an electronic system will independently compile a group of experts who will have to assess the functional capacity of a citizen based on their records.
"The panel will not see the citizens in person until the day of the assessment. This is very important: We want to eliminate the possibility of seeing personal information about the person until the day of the face-to-face assessment," she said.
Stepanyan stressed that citizens are given the opportunity to involve their doctor or a representative of a community organization in the assessment process. In addition to doctors, she said, the assessment panels will also include psychologists, speech therapists and occupational therapists.
"We should stop giving one-size-fits-all social, educational, health care guarantees to people due to their disabilities. The purpose of the new assessment system is e to make an individualized list of services for people with disabilities based on their needs and age," she said.
On May 5, 2021, the Armenian parliament adopted a package of amendments proposed by the government to eliminate discriminatory manifestations and provide appropriate targeted services to all people with disabilities according to their needs.-0-
