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In two weeks time
22 February 2010
Vaclav has lived in the insitution for seven years. Before that, he spent a week at a diagnostic centre in Prague.
“I’ll turn 18 in two weeks time,” Vaclav announces, proudly. “I’m looking forward to being able to go out in the evening. And to better access to the internet, as well as a higher amount of pocket money.”
“It was a big change,” he recalls, “to go there from home. There was different people. A different schedule. It was different from home.”
Vaclav has three sisters who also live in the residential home. “I am the oldest,” he states. “We get along well.”
After his father died, his mother started seeing another man.
“It was bad with him,” Vaclav remembers. “They argued and so on. One day, she left to visit a female friend of hers and spent a week away. So he called the social authority and they came to pick us up and take us away.”
After they arrived at the diagnostic centre, Vaclav and his sisters were told that they would “spend a certain amount of time there before they found something for us – a children’s home or any other facility”.
Although he’s looking forward to leaving the home, he likes it there: “it is a kind of a home,” he says. “I don’t complain about anything. I am comfortable here.”
Vaclav is, understandably, looking to the future. “I want to complete my studies, to take driving lessons and to buy a car,” he says. “I’d like to stay here until I complete my studies, which is a few more years. And then I can keep on seeing my sisters.”
