HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

ACTIVITY

The aim of the Polish Association of the Deaf is to “create organisational framework to the deaf and other persons with hearing impairment to assist them in all matters of their life” - 10 of the PAD Statute.

The Association is active on the whole territory of Poland providing care and help to about 100,000 members and charges, and pursuant to its statutory goals it shall ensure diagnosis and therapy of hearing and speech as well as intellectual and psychical development opportunities to

children and young people with hearing impairment.

Moreover, it trains and prepares parents and care givers towards independent child therapy at home, organises rehabilitation residential courses, advises and assists with solving therapy problems, manages a “hearing aid bank” hiring the aids to the charges while they are waiting to obtain their own device. The Association also conducts remedy work to help the children who attend mass schools and maintains close contacts with teachers and form teachers; co-operates with medical care centres to identify the kind of hearing impairment in their patients’ early childhood and to provide them with specialist care; organises training’s and workshops for medical staff; initiates scientific and statistical research work as well as surveys related to the problems and therapy of children with hearing impairment; initiates and issues publications necessary for revalidation of children and youth; initiates and stimulates manufacture of rehabilitation aids as well as special teaching aids for the purposes of rehabilitation, teaching and revalidation of children and youth.

The Association conducts its activities in 67 diagnostic and rehabilitation units for children and young people with hearing impairment. It employs a specialised staff of 200 including physicians, psychologists, surdo- speech therapists, surdo- educators, audiometrists, logorhythmic therapists, etc.

The units take care of about 15,350 children and young people with hearing impairment as well as of their parents and care givers.

The Association also ensures diagnosis and therapy to

deaf adults.

It fosters activities to help deaf adults in their efforts to maintain ties and identity of the deaf through different forms of care and assistance with all everyday matters of life to the members and charges of the Association. Help is provided in 117 deaf adults rehabilitation and care centres. Social and educational units in the rehabilitation centres also develop various forms of social life.

Rehabilitation and care centres for deaf adults offer about 300,000 services annually. They range from individual rehabilitation, help with everyday life, social, employment, educational, training and re-qualification problems to such areas as family and children upbringing guidance, health care and rehabilitation, legal issues, care, personal environment history, help with translation of sign language in offices, courts, health centres, etc.

Rehabilitation and care centres for deaf adults have also 103 social and educational clubs which provide social rehabilitation opportunities to the Association members. The clubs are a “second home” for the members who can participate in various events, meetings, competitions as well as in cultural, artistic, training, integration activities, social meetings, tourism, e.g. excursions and trips, open-air painting sessions, sigthseeing, exhibitions, dancing and various group activities with translators of sign language, etc. (Sports activities are conducted country-wide by sports clubs for the deaf, which are members of the Polish Sports Association of the Deaf).

Apart from these basic forms of individual and group rehabilitation and care, PDA centres also offer to their members and charges supplementary special services and rehabilitation, mainly health-oriented, such as: auditory tests, providing hearing aids, rehabilitation and preventive residential courses, logopaedic and auditory exercise, speech and sign language correction, corrective exercise, medical tests and assistance, preventive test for deaf women, training’s and lectures on health protection and prevention, sign language courses, etc.

The Polish Association of the Deaf also performs its own business activity running 9 limited liability companies, nine of which employ a certain number of disabled persons. They have about 1300 employees, 62% of whom are disabled. Apart from the profit-oriented operations, a part of which is destined to financially support statutory activities of the Association, the aim of the economic activity is to create jobs for the deaf and rehabilitate them and provide with professional training, as well as to conduct various forms of social rehabilitation mentioned above.

The Association also carries out publishing, publicist and promotional activities connected with the problems of a deaf person, their milieu, rehabilitation of children and youth with hearing impairment, sign language, which is a natural way of communication among the deaf (the deaf are a language minority), etc.

For the last 30 years the Polish Association of the Deaf has been publishing a monthly “The New World of Silence” (“ Nowy Świat Ciszy”) which presents everyday life, major and minor problems of deaf persons, work and activities of the Polish Association of the Deaf.

In pursuing their statutory goals, the Association co-operates with government and local administration, research and scientific institutions, agencies of health, education, culture, tourism ministries, with associations, foundations and institutes supporting its activities.

The Polish Association of the Deaf, which has been active for mare than 50 years, is now practically the only association of the deaf in Poland which conducts such extensive and thorough care and rehabilitation activities for its members and charges. Its main aim is to fulfil these people’s right to - as full as possible - participation in the social life.

STATUTE

The aim of the Polish Association of the Deaf is to provide organisational framework for deaf youth and adults and other persons with hearing impairment in order to assist them with all everyday problems. It is a voluntary, self-governing association which operettas on the basis of voluntary work of its members. It can employ staff to cope with office duties.

The Association has local organisational units, i.e. branches and circles. The Main Board appoints branches which, in turn, nominate Boards for the circles.

In 1999 the Polish Association of the Deaf had 16 branches and 132 circles.

The main organ of the whole Association is the National Delegates’ Meeting which sets out the operational profile of the Association, elects the Chairman and members of the Main Board, Main Scrutinising Committee, Main Fellow-Workers’ Arbitration Organs. Branch Delegates’ Meetings and Assemblies of circle members set out the profile of the activities in their areas and elect Branch Chairmen, Boards of the branches and circles, Scrutinising Committees, Fellow-Workers’ Arbitration Organs and delegates to the meetings.

The term of all Association organs is 5 years. The term of juvenile circle organs is 2 years.

There are following member categories in the Polish Association of the Deaf: ordinary members (natural persons), supporting members (natural and legal persons supporting the Association financially), honorary members (natural persons of special merits for the Association).

The ordinary and honorary members have the right to elect and be elected to all the organs of the Association, apply to all Association organs, benefit from the assistance and aids provided by the Association.

At present the Association has 28347 members of age and 1805 juvenile members.