Mildly mentally-impaired residents disqualified from welfare support

The first ‘MCE Cares- Special Olympics Sports Fun Day’ took place yesterday

Many locals classified as mildly mentally challenged by the authorities in their first assessment have been expelled from the official registration system under the Social Welfare Bureau, which grants medical and transport welfare support to its license-holders, said Hetzer Siu, director of the Macau Special Olympics.
The group’s head told the media, after a sports day co-organized with Melco Crown Entertainment Limited yesterday, that the establishment of a residential care service promised earlier by the government might hardly serve the actual needs of aged people with intellectual disabilities in the city, as the authorities should concentrate more on optimizing the supporting facilities in neighborhoods.
Since the end of last year, according to Siu, over 40 cases were eliminated from the official database after another assessment review, with most of the welfare grantees in the cases currently employed.
“I have no idea why the government has dropped so many people with mild mental disability out of the system. The entire number of registered cases might fall sharply,” said Siu. “They could care more about the issues of community care and double-aging.”
The head of the non-profit organization said that only if the government offered specific reasons behind the massive elimination, and on what benchmark the assessment was based, could they disperse the public’s concerns.

Hetzer Siu

As the mentally impaired population with aging parents could reach almost a half of its entire population in the coming decade, the Macau Special Olympics director hopes that the authorities can gradually beef up their efforts to develop the city’s neighborhoods into a disabled-friendly environment in the absence of their parents in the near future.
“More than residential care, it’s more important to make them live on their own in the neighborhoods, whether or not there is a complete mechanism of supporting facilities for them without restraining them in limited space,” said Siu. “Otherwise, it’s no different from keeping them in prisons.”
He further pointed out that the government’s long-­term plan for the disabled was most likely subject to the bureau, whose information and data, as he proposed, had to undergo a stringent annual review in order to catch up with the current situation. Staff reporter

macau represented in los angeles world summer games

The Special Olympics Macau will deploy a total of around 85 athletes to the upcoming 2015 Special Olympics World Summer Games in Los Angeles on July 21, competing in eight categories. Ao Ieong In, a local bocce player, was just elected to be among the ambassadors from 12 countries, to promote the spirit of the Special Olympics through her own life experience in the following years.