National University of Ireland Galway’s Centre for Disability Law and Policy

That was the title of the conference presenting the coming book on modern disability services to which ENIL has contributed this year. The book has been written by Dr Andrew Power a former member of the research staff at the National University of Ireland Galway’s Centre for Disability Law and Policy (www.nuigalway.ie/cdlp) and will be published in 2012. The book is an international comparison of the relative reform in support delivery models for people with disability. ENIL contributed to the chapters on Sweden and France. The other chapters will cover Canada, USA, UK and Ireland.

The coming book addresses the issue of a personalisation of supports as a current worldwide trend favouring the meeting of real individual needs as opposed to assumed needs. The new trend is opening up choice in personal living arrangements, being used as a basis for the redesigning of supports enabling active citizenship communities. New language is replacing the language of needs and services with concepts of active citizenship. There is a move from traditional models of support based on group services with limited choice towards giving people more choice and control over the support required to live independently and participate in the community. In terms of what is required for change in this way, there is the need for a wholesale rethink of the nature and operation of the welfare state entailing a more individualised approach to the design of services. This entails more consumer power and choice. In order to achieve this, market forces need to be harnessed.

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities powerfully reinforces the current trends. Article 12 restores voice and power to the individual including voice and power over how services are designed and delivered and Article19 demands that services be closely tied to the achievement of choice and independence as well as community involvement.

The conference in November introducing the book provided a meeting point between theorists who bring important perspectives from the new UN disability convention, policy makers interested in redesigning service delivery models, service providers interested in re-imagining their services in the decades to come and persons with disabilities anxious to ensure that future services are adequate to ensure their right to live independent lives and be included in the community.

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