Inhalt:
.Assistance in Austria
(Situation at the office): Can you do this with your assistant? (You hear daughter Lea and colleagues from work at the office)
Bernadette Feuerstein: Assistance at work is very important. Since me and the other colleagues, we need practical support for putting things in order, tidying up or typing longer texts. I also need assistance at meetings, because I need someone who takes me there, assists me in going to the toilet. Naturally I need assistance at work as well as in all other areas of work.
Announcer: The EU project that Bernadette Feuerstein works for alongside her sick leave grace period deals with quality-supported skills for integration/
Bernadette Feuerstein: Our contribution to the project is to introduce the independent-living aspect into training, since we say that we are the real experts and it is not the teachers, therapists and pedagogues who know, what it good for us, but that we know ourselves, what is good for us. We also want to play a decisive role in what is taught in those courses.
Announcer: Bernadette Feuerstein is very versatile. In the morning, very diverse activities are to be done according to necessity. And naturally daughter Lea is at the centre of attention:
Bernadette Feuerstein: With a small child you can?t stick to your schedule exactly ? but I do ordinary housework: shopping, cooking, preparing meals, I do the necessary work for the project. I do other organisational stuff as necessary. You often hear of: additional effort due to disability: And it is true that because of disability a lot of organisational effort is necessary: be it that you need a new prescription for physiotherapy or apply for an aid, calculate the hours of the assistants, thus there is a lot of organisational effort that takes up a lot of time.
I try to do these things in the morning.
Announcer: In the afternoon there is sometimes physiotherapy and twice a month she goes swimming with an assistant and her partner Bernhard. And what else?
Bernadette Feuerstein: When there is no therapy and we don?t go swimming, I try to arrange a pleasant afternoon with Lea. We go to the playground or make a small trip, usually with public transport, where I can go just with the assistant and don?t need a car. In the evening I frequently use the time to get on with the work or meet friends, go to the cinema or there are simply evenings that I hang round in front of the TV.
Since it is not possible to finance assistants throughout, there are also days, when Bernhard brings me to bed.
