Socialization of mentally challenged young people through club activities

the paper is dedicated to the practices of a youth club with the main focus being on the work with disabled children, adolescents, and young people. Under certain conditions, leisure activity is a way of social adaptation of mentally challenged young people, a way to help their parents, and a source of informal education for all involved. The author specifies the characteristics of mentally challenged young people, explains the main difficulties which arise when they interact with adults, determines the main tasks to be completed in order to socialize these people and improve their emotional state. Rehabilitation tourism is presented in the article as a method to perform the following tasks: integration into society, creating additional impetus for developing the independent living skills, family inclusion into the rehabilitation process, general physical rehabilitation, building tolerance in peers. The author provides specific real life examples from practice with mentally challenged young people.