Commissioner for Protection of Equality Brankica Jankovic sent a recommendation to all municipalities and cities to take all necessary actions and measures in order to ensure the establishment and provision of a personal escort service to children in need of this service. After appeals from citizens from this and previous years, Jankovic gave a recommendation, pointing to the need to establish this important service for children with disabilities, bearing in mind the importance of this type of practical support for their inclusion in mainstream education and community activities, as well as for gaining as much independence as possible.

According to data from the report of the Republican Institute for Social Protection, there were 10,857 children with disabilities in the records of centers for social work, of which about 40 percent were children with physical disabilities, slightly less than 20 percent were children with intellectual disabilities, and 17 percent of children with multiple disabilities.

Given that there are still a small number of licensed providers of this service, and undoubtedly this support is necessary as a form of care to meet the basic needs of daily life in the field of movement, maintenance of personal hygiene, feeding, dressing and communication with others, as well as their equal inclusion in education, the support of a personal companion is not a service a child can wait for, since failures to provide it can make it difficult for children with disabilities and disabilities to integrate into the regular schooling system, Commissioner said.

It is important to emphasize that this additional form of child support is a social protection service, which is provided by the old local self-government in accordance with the Law on Social Protection, and for this reason it is the obligation of the local self-government unit to establish and ensure the provision of this services to their children who need this service, concludes Brankica Jankovic.