Prime Minister Rama visited the “Jonathan” Social Centre today, where he spoke with mothers and support staff working with children and young people with disabilities about the doubling of economic support for this category, as well as the new health and social security guarantees for their caregivers.

Meanwhile, the National Action Plan for Persons with Disabilities 2026–2030, approved by the Council of Ministers, provides, in addition to the doubling of the benefit, for more community-based services, easier access to education, employment and rehabilitation, as well as greater support for independent living.

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Prime Minister Edi Rama: Thank you very much for welcoming us here!

We have chosen one of the places where what we hear and what we say about children and young people with special needs is part of daily work, a daily commitment, with all the difficulties involved, but also with a great deal of love and hope.

We chose this place to speak somewhat more broadly than merely about what may be discussed in relation to these centers or social enterprises, and to address what the Government accomplished a few weeks ago: doubling the support for all children with special needs.

It had been a long time since the support provided to these children had become insufficient. Not that it is now sufficient, because it is never enough, but it had genuinely become insufficient, also considering the cost of living and the other difficulties involved.

We promised to double the support provided to them, and I am very pleased that today this support has been doubled.

The number is not small. There are 11,000 children and young people who will benefit from this measure. Beyond this, however, we have also taken another important measure, which had been a constant request from you as well, concerning caregivers. A mother who devotes herself to a child with special needs is unable to go to work regularly in the same way as other mothers do.

And because she cannot go to work, she faces the problem of not having social and health insurance contributions, which then unfairly affects both her possibility of receiving a well-deserved pension in the future and her access to the healthcare system as she should have it.

For this reason, we also decided that the state, through the state budget, will pay the social and health insurance contributions for all mothers and all caregivers, just as though they were employed.

I am saying these things not because they deserve applause, but because it is important for everyone to understand that we are not detached from reality. We are never inattentive to the constant requests coming from different social groups, and we are here to do more, not to rest on the laurels of achievements or successes that are undeniable in many areas.

Today, we certainly have a much more reliable social protection system. It is a far more reliable system because it is more functional, more efficient and faster. I would also like to thank the Director here, as I have not previously had the opportunity to do so. She is a dedicated person who has become very skilled at this work.

Even though she has now been in this position for some time, she has not lost what is most important in this work: the close connection with people, which comes only from passion and from the desire to build that connection. Remja continues to have both that passion and that desire.

Having said all this, naturally, as the old saying goes, “Appetite comes with eating.” Naturally, whatever is achieved becomes part of the past, while the future is not a function of the past.

We need the past so that we do not forget where we started, because people much wiser than I, have said that anyone who does not keep in sight where they started from will find it impossible to reach wherever they are going.

On the other hand, we live in a time when it is no longer enough at all to say, “Look where we used to be,” because, increasingly, people at this new stage of development have expectations and measure reality against those expectations, not against what existed before.

Therefore, together with the Minister, and since you speak regularly with the Director, I would be very pleased to hear anything that you may wish to share with me and with us.

I also want to tell you something. From all my experience in these kinds of exchanges, one learns more from them than from all the different types of conversations and communication one may have with people who work and live in offices.

Thank you very much once again!