Handicap chairman: One Door car No Door

The administration in the capital municipality has acknowledged that the so-called One Door model has failed.

The municipality is now in the process of finding a new organisation that can ensure people with disabilities and particularly challenged citizens case processing and help that meets the requirements of the law.

Sermitsiaq was able to reveal this last week based on a memo that the Administration for Children and Family has made. The disability organisation NIIK has been on the case, and it is not holding back with criticism about the failed disability efforts in the country's largest municipality.

NIIK, Nunatsinni Inuit Innarluutillit Kattuffiat, refers to the One Door model as No Door (ed.).

There was no listening

The organization therefore does not understand why there was no listening and, in particular, no reaction much earlier in the critical process, where cases in violation of the law have been rejected.

- It is of crucial importance for people who are already on their knees in relation to their life situation that the municipal council takes on its responsibility, finds out - and communicates to the public - why it took so long to correct the obviously inadequate case processing, writes NIIK chairman Viggo Johansen. He adds that the municipal director is shirking his responsibility in the latest statement about the scandal.

NIIK believes that the municipal council and the directors must have a distinct lack of understanding of the reality in which people with disabilities and impairments and their relatives live.

- It is not just that the municipality's one-door principle does not work. It is that the entire area is a no-door principle. The vast majority of cases that NIIK takes up drown in paralysis of action, silence and lack of attempts to really change the status quo. Decade after decade, the situation worsens for many of our most exposed and vulnerable citizens in a system that is apparently quicksand for solutions. There is a lack of real cooperation between the Self-Government and municipalities, administrations and sectors, knowledge and action, states NIIK.

Lack of communication

The organization is at a loss to understand why, in a municipality with “only” 23,000 people, they cannot find a model that works, “or alternatively communicate to us in public about what obstacles they encounter in their attempt to change the status quo”.

The list of critical shortcomings is long according to NIIK:

NIIK emphasizes that it is not systems that fail, but on the contrary, people and states that the responsibility lies with the municipal director and the municipal council.

People first

- Going forward, it must be arranged in such a way that employees and caseworkers in the municipalities take care of people first, and bad systems second, regardless of what the prioritization may otherwise be. And that this is supported by management. Especially when transitioning to new systems, is the harsh criticism from the chairman of NIIK Viggo Johansen.