The ANDIS (Agencia Nacional de Discapacidad) national disability agency is in the midst of a deep institutional, administrative and human crisis that is having direct repercussions on the lives of those most need their services.
Under the government trusteeship of Dr Alejandro Vilches, installed after the eruption of a corruption scandal involving leaked audio recordings alleging bribes, the agency is facing a growing list of denunciations for underfunding and irregularities.
Along with Gianfranco Scigliano, now officially appointed as ANDIS deputy executive director, Vilches is facing up to the thousands of children who are being forced to go without scholastic accompaniment or essential therapy.
The backdrop to this awful state of affairs is a political scandal – voice messages attributed to former ANDIS chief Diego Spagnuolo broadcast by local media implicate President Javier Milei’s sister and Presidential Chief-of-Staff Karina Milei in presumed illegal manoeuvres that form part an alleged bribery scheme.
Beyond the political infighting, the biggest shock is the direct impact the chaos is having on families. According to the DataClave website, some 1,700 have already lost the therapeutic accompaniment of their children, with a further 3,500 possibly facing the same situation down the road after cutbacks and streamlining measures imposed on ANDIS.
Therapeutic education centres have closed their doors for lack of funding and categorisation. Audits, instead of guaranteeing efficient attention, have become a machinery for suspending services due to bureaucratic details like expired fire extinguishers, broken doorbells and digital files instead of paperwork.
Struggling amid the cutbacks, a number of families are now speaking out.
‘Relive the anguish’
Roxana, the mother of Iván, a boy with Grade 3 autism, describes her sense of desolation: “This government’s policies have made me relive the anguish when my son’s disability was confirmed. Of course, I [initially] did not want them to give me his certificate because that amounted to recognising his disability but I knew that if they did not give it to me, it would be impossible to take on the medical and psychological expenses and the scholastic accompaniment.”
She continues: “Now the educational centre which he attended has lost its category and I have had to stop working to be at his side, but I don’t know how long my leave [from work] will last. His assistance was a fragile house of cards but indispensable for his health, which I looked after as if it were gold. Now it has collapsed on me.”
Roxana appealed to President Javier Milei’s government for action. “The only thing I ask is to give priority to human beings over all that paperwork and economic balance-sheets,” she pleaded.
Beatriz, the mother of Luana, who suffers from ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder), also faces uncertainty ahead.
“My daughter was going to a special school but there was a change of management and they reduced staff due to budget cuts and they could not handle her problems any more. We began to seek alternatives and on two occasions found vacancies at therapeutic education centres, but they could not start because they had not been categorised [by ANDIS]. In one of those cases they had already begun the paperwork but since it had not been verified, they could not take on new children.
“They told me that they could not even invoice the children already attending and if it went on like that, they would have to close down. Such closures mean between 100 and 200 children aged between four and 15 remaining without school,” says Beatriz.
“This government’s disdain for the most vulnerable is the most sadistic thing I’ve seen in Argentina in the 38 years of my life.”
Chain of activities
Experts warn that the removal of services could greatly affect the disabled.
CASAIE (Cámara Argentina de Servicios de Apoyo a la Inclusión Educativa) President Elizabeth Foschi explained to Noticias magazine the importance of those who assist the vulnerable.
“An SAIE is a support service for inclusive education performed by an interdisciplinary team of directors, mainstream and educational psychologists, special education teachers and social workers – what is known as a basic technical team,” said Foschi. “At the same time there is a support professional to assist the educational institution in offering the student direct support in the scholastic area. It is important to highlight that the SAIEs are services categorised by ANDIS to perform these tasks and a SAIE service thus cannot exist without this category.”
Another acute case is Gonzalo, 48, with a hurt and weary gaze. His son Thiago sits beside him and although he seems to be listening to music, his earphones are silent – they separate him from a world which affects his hypersensitivity. What for a DJ is a work tool to party is Thiago’s only way of forming a healthy link with the outside world.
Thiago’s therapeutic educational centre closed down due to no longer being funded by ANDIS. For the last month he has been left with nothing, explains Gonzalo.
“The private cost of maintaining his schooling and complementary therapy is unpayable. The school costs around a million pesos and if you add the psychologist, the speech therapist and accompaniment, it totals three million [pesos],” he sighs.
“The healthcare scheme covers that, according to the law, but if there are no categorised schools, I have nowhere to send him and he cannot stay at home by himself because he could do himself harm if anything strays from his logic of life," related Gonzalo.
The crisis is not limited to the scholastic area and the chain of activities and payments broken by ANDIS with its calculated inactivity. In parallel, the government also suspended over 80,000 pensions for disability to work with the argument of irregularities in their allocations. Although some suspensions corresponded to dead beneficiaries or voluntary relinquishments, the impact was massive, signifying a monthly saving of over 23 billion pesos at the cost of the incomes of thousands of persons.
The combination of arbitrary audits, defunding centres and cutbacks in pensions and appointments in the midst of political scandals paints a sombre panorama for the disabled in Argentina and their families. Parents who have to stop working to accompany their children, professionals who become unemployed from one day to the next, children who lose their schooling, social contacts, routine and basic right to inclusion.
Three ANDIS officials were approached for comment, but no response was given.
The state, far from guaranteeing rights, is withdrawing. Policies of control are replacing those of protection, numbers count for more than people and bureaucracy prevails over any sense of humanity.
Iván, Luana, Thiago and thousands of other children are not just statistics but lives transfixed by an abandonment disguised as audits. And while the official silence from the government is deafening, the families keep asking for the same thing: that somebody listens to them.
– TIMES/NOTICIAS/PERFIL
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