Gwangju Mayor Lee Yong-seop's First Task of the New Year: Visiting Care Centers for Severely Disabled Developmental Disorder Patients

On the morning of the 3rd, Lee Yong-seop, Mayor of Gwangju Metropolitan City, visited KTIL Day Activity Service Provider, a care service institution for the most severe developmental disabilities located in Sinan-dong, Buk-gu. He held a meeting with members of the National Parents of Disabled Persons Association Gwangju Branch to discuss opinions on care service policies. Photo by Gwangju Metropolitan City

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters Reporter Park Seon-gang] Lee Yong-seop, Mayor of Gwangju Metropolitan City, began his New Year's work on the morning of the 3rd, a holiday, by visiting the KTIL Day Activity Service provider, an institution offering care services for the most severely developmentally disabled, to inspect the care service status and listen to the opinions of users and their parents.

The mayor's visit to a care service institution for the developmentally disabled as his first field visit of the new year is interpreted as a commitment to implement various policies so that vulnerable groups in our society, including the disabled, can live without inconvenience in the new year as well.

During the visit, Mayor Lee carefully examined the care service situation while touring the facility and encouraged the staff providing the day activity services.

He then held a meeting with the parents of day activity service users to hear their difficulties and exchanged various opinions on care service policies.

In accordance with the "Plan to Support the Most Severely Developmentally Disabled" announced in September last year, Gwangju City started one-on-one weekend and holiday care services for the most severely developmentally disabled from the 2nd of this month. From March, a residential model will be introduced at disability welfare centers, where multiple day activity supports are provided, allowing users to stay overnight with dedicated staff from evening until the next morning, offering behavior modification and care services.

Additionally, an emergency care support project has been promoted to relieve the burden on parents caring for developmentally disabled children by providing a safe place to leave their children in case of urgent situations such as hospital admission or family events.

Furthermore, Gwangju has established the first-ever Developmental Disability Transition Support Team within the Developmental Disability Support Center nationwide, dedicated to improving the rights and support for about 8,000 developmentally disabled individuals and their families in the Gwangju area.

Mayor Lee Yong-seop said, “In front of the portrait of a developmentally disabled mother and child who passed away on June 3rd last year, I vowed that such a tragic incident would never happen again,” adding, “We will continuously communicate with parents of the disabled and related organizations to implement more meticulous and effective policies.”

He added, “We will build an information platform for supporting the developmentally disabled in the city to ensure that not a single person misses out on support due to lack of information.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.