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“Living life: a fundamental right! Respected right?”

The right to live independently and to be included in the community is guaranteed to persons with disabilities through many international and European conventions, resolutions and actions such as article 19 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UN CRPD).

Several European countries are in a “reformulation” of the approach to persons with disabilities. The disability sector is experiencing a shift from the old service-driven (top-down) approach to a more user-driven (person-centred) approach which aims at giving to persons with disabilities more autonomy and freedom of choice in their lives. The positive aspect of the new approach is to focus on the autonomy of the person and its participation in social life. This process, which began ten years ago, has led to an international standardisation through legal tools such as the UN CRPD. This became a requirement for Belgium in 2009 when the country ratified the Convention.

For these reasons, Eva ASBL in collaboration with the European Network on Independent Living and the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities and also in the presence of the representative for Europe of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), organised a symposium in the Walloon Parliament in Namur. The event gathered persons with disabilities and their associations, political representatives, academics and governments, experts and service providers, European and Belgian Federal State and Regions, to think together how to build a new model of society in Wallonia.

EASPD Vice-president and Director of Learning Disability Wales, Jim Crowe, intervened during the symposium and presented the Welsh experience in transforming services to promote independent living. He highlighted that “services must be built-up to meet the needs of the individual”.

This event was fully grounded in the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and particularly the right to independent living and inclusion in society, as defined in Article 19. In October 2014, the UN Expert Committee asked the Belgian State and its constituent entities to implement policies that promote choice. The Personal Assistance Budget (PAB) is one of the main tools used to make the change and to have a human rights approach to disability. It can allow persons with disabilities to fully control the support they receive. However, today PAB in Wallonia is a choice to very few people and there is a severe lack of appropriate services in the region.

During the event, EASPD Secretary General, Luk Zelderloo, referred to the best way to make the shift in the disability sector from the old vision to the one stated by the UN CRPD. “In the past we brought people to the support –especial schools, especial institutions, and special sheltered workshops -. In the future the challenge for all of us is to bring the support to the people – in the families, in the community- where people live. And that is what we have to work on together: authorities, service providers, organisations representing persons with disabilities themselves and of course also family groups”, he said.

At the European level there is a strong will to support and promote independent living and move away from institutions as demonstrates the creation of the European Expert Group on the transition from Institutional to Community-Based Care. This group composed by 12 partners, including EASPD, has developed the European Guidelines on the transition from institutions to community care, available in 14 EU languages.

Besides, EASPD, aware of the key role played by services to make a reality the change, published a Roadmap on De-institutionalisation.

Full article.