Moving from Residential Institutions to Community-Based Social Services

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MOVING FROM RESIDENTIAL INSTITUTIONS TO COMMUNITY-BASED SOCIAL SERVICES
IN CENTRAL AND EASTERN EUROPE AND THE FORMER SOVIET UNION

by David Tobis
The World Bank

This study focuses on five countries—Albania, Armenia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Romania—where the World Bank is helping develop community-based social services to reduce the reliance on residential institutions. The study examines the use of residential institutions for three groups: children, people with disabilities (mental, physical, or sensory impairment), and the frail and isolated elderly.

One of the most harmful, costly, and intractable legacies of the command economies of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union is the reliance on residential institutions for the care of children, the elderly, and people with disabilities. As a result, there are almost no community-based alternatives to care for large and growing numbers of vulnerable individuals.

At least 1.3 million children, people with disabilities, and elderly people in the region live in some 7,400 large, highly structured institutions. These institutions house almost 1 percent of the region’s children, about 4 percent of people with disabilities, and about 1 percent of the elderly.

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