Independent living means that a person has the right to live like others and can make independent decisions about their way of life. Personal assistance plays a crucial role in ensuring independent living for persons with disabilities. Since personal assistance is a system composed of multiple subsystems, such as personal assistance providers, coordinators at social work centers, and personal assistants, I decided to explore how users experience these individual subsystems of personal assistance in my qualitative research. In the theoretical part of my work, to better understand the position of persons with disabilities, I first focused on defining disability, various models of disability perspecitives, its history, and the development of personal assistance. I provided a detailed description of the personal assistance system in Slovenia and compared it with personal assistance systems in several Eastern European countries. Additionally, I included foreign studies that focused on the quality of personal assistance, the abuse of persons with disabilities, and the relationships between users and their personal assistants.The study included individuals over 18 years of age with physical disabilities who have been using personal assistance in Slovenia for more than two years. Using a semi-standardized questionnaire, I conducted 12 interviews. With the interviewees, I addressed topics such as the process of obtaining personal assistance, coordinators at social work centers, personal assistance providers, and personal assistants.The results of the study revealed shortcomings in all subsystems of personal assistance. Many irregularities were pointed out regarding visits by expert committees to users' homes, as well as the absence of visits by coordinators from social work centers. The participants were generally satisfied with personal assistance providers, though challenges arose in ensuring substitute personal assistants. I found that most interviewees were satisfied with their personal assistants, although many reported negative experiences and feelings with personal assistants in the past.
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