Rıdvan Duran, Deputy Minister of Family and Social Services, said that our Ministry aims to develop a "Family-Based National Early Intervention Program for Children with Disabilities" in which the risks for the development of infants and children are identified, their development is monitored and families are supported by training.

Our Deputy Minister Rıdvan Duran chaired the Family-Based National Early Intervention Program Development Workshop for Children with Disabilities. Expressing that the workshop was held in order to ensure the effective participation of all parties related to the issue, and that they received the evaluations and opinions of civil society organizations and their observations from the field, Deputy Minister Duran continued as follows:

“As the Ministry, with our human-oriented and rights-based policies and services that embrace all segments of society, we continue with a more holistic and more systematic approach to remove legal, social and physical barriers to our citizens, and to increase not only the quantity but also the quality in all areas of social protection.

Early intervention means determining the risk situations of newborns and young children starting from pre-pregnancy against developmental delays or inadequacies, ensuring that protective measures are taken to eliminate these risks, and providing early diagnosis, early health, early education and rehabilitation services in a systematic intervention chain.

A new service area to be offered for children who are diagnosed at an early stage and gain access to social services will be the early intervention service area.

We will implement the "Family-Based National Early Intervention Programme", in which the risks for the development of infants and children are identified, their development is monitored, and families are included in the process by establishing a family support program, in addition to the access of children diagnosed in the early period to health services.

While we carry out all these services and determine our policies, we care about your support, our valuable civil society representatives. In the afternoon session, we will exchange ideas by listening to your presentations and taking your field experiences and evaluations through consultations. I hope that all the work we do will be beneficial and contribute to our citizens.”

After the presentation of international good practices, the second part of the workshop continued under the chairmanship of our General Director of Services for Persons with Disabilities and the Elderly, Elmas Esra Ceceli.

Representatives of civil society organizations took the floor and conveyed their opinions and assessments on the current role of civil society organizations in supporting families and accessing services, what is necessary for civil society organizations to be actively involved in the process and provide support to families, and what areas the capacities of civil society organizations need to be developed.   

Our General Director Elmas Esra Ceceli thanked the UNICEF Türkiye Office and all the participants for their contribution and participation, emphasizing that the opinions and suggestions received at the workshop will be reported and that the cooperation with civil society organizations will continue to be strengthened within the scope of the Family-Based National Early Intervention Program for Children with Disabilities.