EASPD

'Bringing the UN Convention home to Europe' 14-15 February 2008 - Rome, Italy

EU and national legal frameworks facilitating the implementation of the UN Convention and the Council of Europe Action Plan.

Article 19 of the recently adopted United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities guarantees a right to live independently and to be included in the community. In order to achieve this it specifically adds that persons with disabilities have a right to services (art. 26) to support living and inclusion in the community. It is expected that this Convention will become one of the most ratified in the world. Action Lines 8, 9 & 10 of the Council of Europe Action Plan stress the need for community based support and high quality services.

The seminar aims to explore the practical steps necessary to give effect to Article 19 & 22 of the Convention and action lines 8-10 of the Council of Europe Action Plan, especially in a European context. It will look in particular at legislation and legal frameworks in order to build up the right kind of support systems for disabled people to be included and participate fully in society.

Click here for the program of the event.

The seminar on ‘the impact of EU policies on social and health service providers for people with disabilities in Europe’ took place in the premises of the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) on December 7th 2007. More than 30 sector leaders from all over Europe have come together to discuss the political positioning of EASPD in a number of debates.

The main themes to be discussed were:

• Social and health services of general interest
• Quality of services
• Nature of the provider
• Competition and for profit ↔ not for profit service provision

During the morning session, other stakeholders such as the European Commission, the EESC, the Social Platform and EDF presented their position. The afternoon session was more like an internal brainstorm session amongst members. A full programme of the seminar and the overview presentation of Jelle Reynaert are available in the annex of this report.

*** Click here for the final report

*** Click here for the presentation of Jelle Reynaert

'Walking with Families' 8-9 November 2007 - Lisbon, Portugal

Good Service providers need and want to work with families because:

• Families are important to everyone  

• Most people with intellectual disabilities live with their families
• Families have often been innovators

This conference was an important and exciting opportunity to:

• Listen to success stories from across Europe about how families have worked with service providers, professionals and policy makers to make things better
• Share new ideas and develop new alliances
• Ensure services are properly resourced and person and family centred

Click here for the program of the event in English, in French

Report by Phil Madden, Chair of the Conference

'Personalised Budgets & Direct Payments' 11 May 2007 - Sofia, Bulgaria

In the last decade service provision for people with disabilities has changed rapidly. Central themes in the disability policy in many countries are: awareness raising, empowerment, de-institutionalization and personalized services.

EASPD as important network from service providers is aware of what often is called the paradigm change. The last years discussions in EASPD are centered on the theme: person centered services. Different aspects were subject of conferences and discussions in the past three years. When talking about person centered services as basic assumption for today’s services the discussion about the payment of services is directly connected.

Since many years in several countries a system for direct payments, personal assistance budgets or individualized payments are introduced, sometimes as experiment, in other situations as the next step for financing services. This means that a budget is given not to the service provider but directly to the person with a disability, who then buys/contracts its own support.

Whatever the direction in a country will be it is a fact that person centered services are required by service users and that direct payments and personalized budgets are increasingly important and challenging for service providers.

Now EASPD offers all stakeholders a unique chance to get the last information from different countries and different perspectives.

During the seminar EASPD wanted to:

• Map the developments in the different countries
• Provide service providers with information about consequences and conditions
• Make clear the challenges for service providers
• Inspire service providers in finding solutions for tomorrow
• Open a forum for service providers in taking initiatives facing the needs of people with special needs and own budgets
• Contribute to discussions about new patters for funding services

Report by Mineke Hardeman, Chair of the Conference