At a center for disabled children and adults in Greece, the challenges of working within a limited budget have been been dealt with in shocking fashion: some children are kept in cages, a practice that, according to the BBC, is still continuing five years after it was first brought to the attention of outside authorities.
The children at the center—more than two-thirds of whom are there because they were abandoned by their parents, according to a center employee—have conditions ranging from autism to Down syndrome. The cages were built after management decided that staff could not adequately protect children from themselves after a 15-year-old died in 2006 choking on a sponge he’d swallowed by accident and, ten months later, the autopsy of 16-year-old who’d died at the center showed that he too had swallowed objects.
An official from Greece’s Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare claims that new staff at the center cannot be hired because of EU and IMF stipulations accompanying economic aid to Greece. Further details and images are available at the BBC’s site.
