The Independent Living movement in Sweden has a long history of demonstrations. Now it’s time to take on the placards again and rescue assistance!
Country after country uses the economic crisis to cut the funding of reforms of personal assistance. In Sweden the savings proposals is threatening the world’s best personal assistance legislation.
Due to recent figures from the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (who is responsible for all matters of personal assistance in Sweden) about five percent of the assistance users now are losing their personal assistance after their needs have been reviewed. They are no longer considered to have at least 20 hours of basic needs per week*, often because they are able to bring the spoon or fork to their mouth (not necessarily with food on).
The Social Insurance Agency has also pioneered the use of the term “active” time. This means that if you have need of assistance a few minutes now and again but manage yourselves in between, you are only granted assistance specifically for the active time.
Even people with more complex needs have had drastic cuts in their assistance. There are members in JAG who have lost their assistance hours at night despite the needs being uniformed, for example persons with epilepsy who are unable to alert in need of assistance.
The Social Insurance Agency is also trying to make the application of assistance benefit more “unified” by, among other things, define what specific activities and situations that should be considered as part of daily life. The Swedish Independent Living movement is of course questioning on what grounds the Social Insurance Agency considers it’s their mandate to define the law. It is totally against the intentions of the assistance legislation to deny someone support by reference to a norm! Click here to read more.. »
On 6 October 2011, the European Commission adopted legislative proposals for cohesion policy during the period 2014 – 2020. Among other, the new proposals set out the rules for the use of the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund (together referred to as the EU Structural Funds) in the next programming period.
On 15 September, the fifth edition of the Freedom Drive was held in Strasbourg. The Freedom Drive is a march for freedom organised every two years by ENIL, which this year saw over two hundred people with disabilities from 20 countries marching from Place de la Republic to the European Parliament.
During the Freedom Drive, the delegation from Sweden held a meeting with a number of Swedish MEPs. As a result of this meeting, a group of MEPs published an article in a major newspaper calling for the closure of long stay residential institutions for persons with disabilities in Europe.
Before this year’s Freedom Drive, we analysed the progress made in implementing the demands from 2009. In case you have not had a chance to read this document, we are sending it to you again. The second document, Freedom Drive Demands Explained, sets out what is behind this year’s demands. ENIL will use the next two years to lobby for their implementation with the relevant institutions, such as the European Commission and the European Parliament Disability Intergroup.
This report includes summaries of all the meetings and events organised during the Freedom Drive week. You will also find the selected press coverage and the main documents in the Annex to the report.
In Sweden, every decision regarding personal assistance is reconsidered every second year. The social insurance agency’s new decision making guidelines lead to many people losing their personal assistance affiliated to these reconsiderations. 
