Lithuanian Disability Forum, together with partners from Latvia (SUSTENTO) and Sweden (Independent Living Institute), has prepared guidelines to help understand and apply the principle of reasonable accommodation in practice.

The guidelines emphasize that reasonable accommodation is not only a legal obligation under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities but also a practical measure that ensures equality, inclusion, and the fulfillment of individual needs.

The guidelines are based on international and European documents and aim to promote more consistent and inclusive implementation of this principle in Lithuania, Latvia, and Sweden, especially in areas such as employment, education, and healthcare.

In this publication, you will find:

Vad är Independent Living (IL)?

Independent Living är en filosofi och en internationell rörelse av människor med funktionsnedsättningar som arbetar för självbestämmande, lika villkor och självrespekt.

ANNUAL REPORT 2024

The Independent Living Institute (ILI) works to promote opportunities for people with disabilities to gain more personal and political power, self-determination, full participation and equality through information, education, advocacy and project activities.

Compiled by Paige Martin, Jamie Bolling and Algren Morgan, August 2024.

ANNUAL REPORT 2023

The Independent Living Institute (ILI) works to promote opportunities for people with disabilities for more personal and political power, self-determination, full participation and equality through information, education, advocacy and project activities.

Catalina Fipper and Nelly Hölter
Master Students in Ethnic and Migration Studies at Linköping University, Sweden.

In Sweden there are changes in the law being viewed for personal assistance. One change that is now on the table is to make the state solely responsible for personal assistance and not as it is today – a division between the state and the municipalities.

In March, results were presented from an investigation suggesting that personal assistance should be entirely decided and paid for by the state. This is something that the Swedish cooperative STIL has been lobbying for a long time. If this proposal were to go through, those people who currently have their personal assistance granted by the municipality will be transferred to the Swedish Försäkringskassan, or the national authority.

In 2012, the Polish parliament, which had a majority of the centrist parties, ratified the CRPD. Despite this, nothing was done to make personal assistance available and regulated at central level. Until 2019, this kind of support was mainly organised only in Poland's largest cities. This was done by NGOs, not controlled by persons with disabilities. The services were funded by European Union funds or city budgets. A report prepared by independent researchers, commissioned by the government's Office for Persons with Disabilities shows that between 2016 and 2020, personal assistance was not implemented fully in accordance with the CRPD and General Comment 5 anywhere in Poland. There was a lack of regulations specifying in which activities the assistant could support the service user. Interruptions in the implementation of services, even lasting several months, were frequent. The users could not decide who would become their personal assistant. Service hour limits were not tailored to individual service users' needs. Children and young people were not able to access personal assistants. In practice, people living in rural areas and small towns were not able to access these services.

As you know there are different ways of organizing personal assistance in the Finnish model: purchase service, service voucher and an employer model. The Threshold Association favours especially the employer model, because it provides the best starting point for the independent living. Personal assistance has been a subjective right for the disabled people in Finland since 2009.

Nordic independent living organisations join forces to systematically exchange documentation and the development of the situation of personal assistance in each country. This way trends and threats can be identified in order to organise counter activity.

Iceland, Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway have similar welfare states, and have all ratified The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). In the Nordic Council and other fora, Nordic politicians exchange ideas on political reforms on issues such as personal assistance (PA). Governmental investigations and policy papers on PA in Norway and Sweden compare PA in the Nordic countries.

What is Peer Support and why is it important in the context of Independent Living

Peer support is one of the pillars of Independent Living and an essential element for the self-determination of disabled people.

Peer support can be described as the help and support that people with lived experience can give to other individuals in a similar situation. For example, it can refer to support provided by someone using personal assistance (PA) to another person using a PA. Or, to somebody who has lived in an institution in the past to other people still living in institutions. This support may be social, emotional or practical (or all of these), and can be life changing.

Abstract

The intersection of forced migration and disability is often overlooked, both in research, public discourse and political action. Building on the emerging literature looking at the situation in host countries and against the backdrop of the increasing focus on employment in both asylum and disability contexts, the thesis explores the access to the labour market for persons with disabilities and forced migration experience in Sweden and Germany. In order to answer the question of how pathways to the labour market for persons with disabilities and forced migration experience look like, the thesis combines a policy document analysis with four semi-structured interviews with organisations working at the intersection in both countries.

ANNUAL REPORT 2022

Independent Living Institute (ILI) works to promote opportunities for persons with disabilities for more personal and political power, self-determination, full participation and equality through information, education, advocacy, and project activities. In 2022, ILI carried out several projects in pursuit of its goals and visions, described in this document. All major projects have their own webpage, Facebook page, and published newsletter.