Mapping the National Disability Policy Landscape

This report was undertaken as part of the Moving Ahead project, a research study that aimed to examine the role of factors that contribute to the successful transfer of residents with intellectual disabilities from congregated to community-based living arrangements in two regional areas in Ireland. The study was undertaken by a team of researchers from Ireland and the UK, led by Trinity College Dublin

From Disability Benefits to Gainful Employment: Sub-regional Conference Report, 6-8 Oct. 2005, Reumal Center, Fojnica, Bosnia and Herzegovina

In 2004, ILO SRO Budapest asked the Austrian Government to co-fund a sub-regional seminar on disability pension reform to bring together all ILO constituents from all SEE countries (the former Yugoslavia, except Slovenia; but Albania, Moldova; and some representatives of NGOs from the host country). The purpose was to focus on detailed problems regarding the transition from benefit regimes to job integration. This request was positively received by the Austrian Government, and its funding was supplemented by French project resources, used for the disability policy survey described above. For policymakers, a meaningful reintegration of persons with disabilities into the workplace should entail the following goals brought into focus at this conference:• to come to a common understanding of the linkages – both mutually reinforcingand tensions – among employment, labour market, and social protection (benefits) policies• to evaluate the incentive/disincentive functions of disability benefit systems with regard to the labour market integration of beneficiaries• to identify the potential benefits of shifting from benefit-based approaches to labour market integration approaches in disability policy• to understand how persons with disabilities perceive their own needs for support in seeking to enter or reenter employment• to develop a set of next steps for disability policy reform towards employment integration. These were the goals of the conference “From Disability Benefits to GainfulEmployment”, held in Fojnica, BiH in October 2005 with the support of the Austrian Government. The participants included over 30 participants from federal, regional entity, and municipal levels of government in BiH as well as two representatives each from Albania, Croatia, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, Moldova, Montenegro, and Serbia – who are either policymakers, senior civil servants at labour market and social security/assistance institutions, managers of service delivery and rehabilitation institutions in the area of disability policy or subsequent fields, or NGOs working for disability rights in BiH and other SEE countries

Transforming Disability Policy: Testimony to the Senate Committee on FInance

Briefing paper prepared for the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance Hearing, Barriers to Work for Individuals Receiving Social Security Benefits, June 21, 2007. Personal views on transformation of disability policy

Employment and Disability Policy: the role of the psychologist

Persons with minor or major disabilities represent a significant portion of the U.S. working-age population. Based on the 1993 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), approximately 30 million (19%) men and women 18 to 64 years of age report some type of physical or mental limitation. For approximately 55% of these individuals (about 10% of those 18 to 64), the limitations are severe

Transforming Disability Policy for Youth and Young Adults with Disabilities

DE129B_PDF2.pdf: 842 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020

Introduction to disability policy through a human rights lens

This handbook on disability policy considers the impact on policy of understanding disability through a human rights framework. The introduction chapter describes the diverse conceptual approaches to disability policy, which sometimes operate in conflict or to exclude other approaches. The chapter explains the critical understanding of policy as the social relations between people engaged in the enactment of policy as a process. The chapter considers how a human rights understanding of disability interacts with and influences welfare, health and economic approaches to disability policy, especially in the context of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The argument for critiquing disability policy through the lens of human rights is presented to introduce the following chapters and narratives. The collective contributions offer a global perspective of disability policy at particular points in time and place, informed by the expertise of people with disability about their human rights

Dismantling the Poverty Trap: Disability Policy for the Twenty-First Century

Working-age people with disabilities are much more likely than people without disabilities to live in poverty and not be employed or have shared in the economic prosperity of the late 1990s. Today’s disability policies, which remain rooted in paternalism, create a “poverty trap” that recent reforms have not resolved. This discouraging situation will continue unless broad, systemic reforms promoting economic self-sufficiency are implemented, in line with more modern thinking about disability. Indeed, the implementation of such reforms may be the only way to protect people with disabilities from the probable loss of benefits if the federal government cuts funding for entitlement programs. This article suggests some principles to guide reforms and encourage debate and asks whether such comprehensive reforms can be successfully designed and implemented