In Bulgaria the difficult situation of transition that the country is going through is also reflected in that of the handicapped, who receive very low disability allowances and have huge difficulties in finding someone to assist them. A disabled women in Plovdiv denounced the Bulgarian state because the pavement in front of her home was 40 cm high. She won her case. The women, confined to a wheelchair ever since she was a child, declared that the environment in Plovdiv was unsuitable for the disabled and gave them no chance to move about, given also that most public transport is inaccessible to wheelchairs. On the occasion of the European Year of the disabled the Bulgarian Parliament, together with other non-parliamentary organizations, gave the go ahead to a series of measures to help the handicapped. For several years now the Bulgarian Catholic Church, through Caritas, has been helping disabled persons and especially children and adolescents with serious physical handicaps. There are three specialized therapeutic centres in Bulgaria: at Russe, on the frontier with Romania, at Jambol, in the south-east, and in the capital Sofia. The disabled children who participate in these programmes are assisted by doctors, psychiatrists and teachers. They meet together in these centres each day to play together, to learn foreign languages and use the computer. In this way considerable help is also given to the parents, who may seek a job. The programmes are funded by Caritas-Germany and Caritas-Switzerland.
