A non-profit, parent-run support organisation for children with disabilities and learning difficulties, and whose requests for financial assistance have repeatedly been turned down by government for over six years, now faces imminent closure due to lack of funds.
The Equal Partnership Foundation (EPF) currently provides support services to close to 200 families with members who have special needs, mainly persons with physical and intellectual impairments. In the last three years the number of parents resorting to its services has increased exponentially, but according to executive manager Anabel Mifsud, the Foundation will nonetheless have to cease providing its services within the next few months.
“In order to deliver the services the Foundation requires a lot of funding,” Mifsud resignedly told MaltaToday. “The support the Foundation gives relies on the fees the families pay, the sponsorships and donations we receive, the fundraising we manage to organise, and many hours of voluntary work.
“The commitment towards the Foundation by all those involved translates into more than 5,000 hours of voluntary work per year. All the professionals working with Equal Partners give one hour out of every 10 hours as voluntary work towards the Foundation.  In addition, the senior professionals, who organise all the Foundation’s training, give their training services to the Foundation free of charge.”
Ever since 2000 the Foundation has made repeated requests for government funding of the kind already given to other, similar non-profit organisations such as the Eden Foundation, which currently benefits from State subsidy to the tune of over Lm300,000 a year. But EPF’s requests for financial aid have consistently been turned down over the years without any satisfactory explanation for the apparent discrimination.
In a meeting in March 2003, Education Minister Louis Galea was quoted as saying: “I can see no light at the end of the tunnel for your foundation.” Several attempts to contact the minister by phone yesterday proved fruitless, although Dr Galea eventually sent an SMS denying having made any such remark.
But members of the Foundation’s committee who were present for this meeting stood by their version of events when asked, insisting that the minister used those exact words.
Either way, it seems that the government is bound by an agreement signed with the Eden Foundation in April 1996, as a result of which the non-profit organisation founded by former Nationalist MP Dr Josie Muscat enjoys exclusivity when it comes to government funding to NGOs in the disability field.
In March 2006, this “positive discrimination” was questioned in a report drawn up by former finance minister Lino Spiteri, who observed that: “given the extent of provision within the State sector, the competing demand for assistance by NGOs, and the right of parents to be free to choose whenever possible, Government should review the agreement with the Eden Foundation, and how it allocates such financial resources should be reviewed. It should determine how best to enable parents who select different programmes to benefit equitably from such public assistance.”
To date, however, the 1996 agreement has not been revised, and the Eden Foundation continues to be the sole net beneficiary of government’s generosity on a year to year basis, for reasons which have never been made fully clear.
Even a parliamentary question submitted by Nationalist MP Jeffrey Pullicino Orlando in May 2006 – three months after the Spiteri Report – appears to have been brushed aside by the Education Minister. Asked by Pullicino Orlando whether Spiteri’s recommendations regarding state funding had been taken on board, Galea replied that his ministry was giving due consideration to the policy implications of this recommendation, to arrive at the necessary decision later that year.
Almost 18 months later, no decision has been taken. Published reports reveal that the Eden Foundation this year alone received Lm310,000 in state subsidy.
Meetings were also held with the Social Policy Ministry and Finance Ministry, but EPF representatives were always redirected to the Education Ministry.
Elsewhere, Former Children’s Commissioner Sonia Camilleri advised the Foundation to seek redress from the office of the Ombudsman. However, it transpired that the Ombudsman only sees to individual cases. After seeking advice from the National Commission for Persons with Disability, EPF were informed that the Equal Opportunities Act (Persons with disability) 2000 only caters for individual grievances.
Meanwhile, in a last ditch attempt to address the situation, Equal Partners Foundation wrote a letter to Prime Minister Lawrence Gonzi on October 11 of this year.
“After all these years we are tired and disheartened of fighting and knocking on the same doors against an inequity which is so evident, without being acknowledged,” Mifsud wrote. “The Foundation has come to a point where it is struggling to keep up with the current level of services. It is pitiful to note that as per bank statement as at end of September our bank balance went down to Lm3,200.”
To date, no acknowledgement has been received, still less a reply.