Care and health
People with disabilities should be able to lead as self-determined and inclusive a life as possible. This has not always been a given throughout history, and even today, many steps are needed to achieve the goal of a largely inclusive society. The path to this goal involves raising awareness about impairment and disability, providing various services and assistive technologies, ensuring comprehensive accessibility, and facilitating active participation in all areas of society. When a person's body, senses, mind, or soul is impaired for an extended period, special needs arise. Affected individuals therefore require support or a special environment to shape their daily lives in a self-determined manner.
Reference Projects
Participatory Process
In recent years, we have conducted several participatory processes involving both intellectually and multiply impaired individuals as well as those with physical and/or sensory impairments.
Personal Assistance - A Comparison of Federal States
Inclusive Research
We involved individuals with disabilities in research projects and included intellectually impaired individuals as researchers in their own right in the context of inclusive research.
Evaluation
Last but not least, the NPO Competence Center also deals with legal and socio-political frameworks concerning people with impairments. In this context, we have conducted several evaluations.
Evaluation of the Disability Equality Act
SROI and Impact Analyses
Through a Social Return on Investment (SROI) analysis, the social value created by organizations or projects is comprehensively captured and assessed. The method aims to measure not only the financial but also the explicit social impacts of the organization or projects.
Impact analysis of the "Get Active" winning project 2017: Discovering Hands
SROI analysis of the project "Tibor-háza" ("For Equal Opportunities!")
Legal Framework
A milestone was the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which has been ratified by 177 states (as of April 2018).
The CRPD has been in force in Austria since 2008. It obliges the Republic of Austria to guarantee all necessary rights for people with disabilities. An important example is accessibility, i.e., access to the physical environment, transportation, information and communication, as well as public facilities and services. Significant decisions regarding which services and products, what types and forms of accessibility should be invested in require data on the number of affected individuals and the nature and extent of their support needs. Based on this, political decisions can be made in this essential socio-political area.
Data Situation
Unfortunately, despite increased research efforts, the data situation is still unsatisfactory both nationally and internationally. This is partly due to a heterogeneous understanding of what constitutes impairment and which individuals are affected.
National
The current report of the Austrian government on the situation of people with disabilities assumes that one in five individuals in a private household is affected by a physical, sensory, or cognitive impairment. This corresponds to about 1.34 million people aged 15 and older (Baldaszti, 2016). Additionally, according to official statistics, 6,709 individuals are housed in facilities for people with disabilities (Statistics Austria, 2015).
However, surveys conducted by the NPO Competence Center in the Austrian federal states revealed a significantly larger number of 13,760 individuals or 0.16% of the population. Other statistics mention nearly 400,000 disabled individuals who have a disability pass or about 100,000 individuals receiving increased family allowances.
The wide range is explainable by the nature of the questions asked or the eligibility criteria. For example, the Statistics Austria survey asked whether the person feels limited in daily life due to a health impairment lasting longer than six months. Increased family allowances, on the other hand, are only available to children who have a significant disability before reaching the age of 21 or, in exceptional cases, 25. After that, it is granted without an age limit.
It is also problematic that official statistics do not capture individuals living in facilities. Thus, a large number of people with intellectual disabilities do not have the opportunity to participate in quality of life surveys. The same applies to individuals in nursing and care homes.
International
The collection of data on people with disabilities is not only difficult in Austria. There is also a lack of valid comparable data on this topic at the European level. In 2012, the European Health and Social Integration Survey (EHSIS) was conducted as the only EU-wide survey specialized in this topic. Since the establishment of a common legal basis for a regularly conducted "Disability Survey" failed, only some questions from the EHSIS will be integrated into the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS), which is conducted every five years. In Austria, this survey will be conducted again in 2019.
Some international examples show that the inclusion of people with disabilities in specific surveys is possible. These include the Australian Survey of Disability, Ageing and Carers (SDAC), the Canadian Survey on Disability (CSD), or the Life Opportunities Survey in the UK (LOS). In 2017, a comprehensive representative survey on the participation of people with disabilities was also conducted in the Federal Republic of Germany (Schröder et al., 2017).
Aging Society
In recent years, the topic of aging and impairment, especially concerning intellectually impaired individuals, has gained relevance. Many intellectually impaired people worked in workshops and live in residential facilities that are not care facilities. Now, for the first time, a generation is reaching an older age. However, these individuals may have different needs in care and support compared to those who have lived their lives into old age without apparent impairments.
Inclusion
Other current topics include inclusion in the workplace, leisure, and accessibility. The latter is regulated in the law on the equality of people with disabilities.
Essentially, people with disabilities should have the same access to publicly offered services as people without impairments. Therefore, services available to the public must be accessible and usable for people with disabilities in the usual manner, i.e., without special difficulties and generally without external assistance. Last but not least, the topic of people with disabilities has also resonated with social entrepreneurs. Projects like Dialog im Dunklen, Discovering Hands, or Specialisterne vividly demonstrate how the issue of inclusion can be addressed within market-oriented companies, creating social value.
The NPO Competence Center has extensive experience with the topic of impairment and sees itself as a competent contact point. In recent years, we have conducted several participatory processes involving both intellectually and multiply impaired individuals as well as those with physical and/or sensory impairments.
LITERATURE:
Baldaszti, E (2016): Menschen mit Beeinträchtigungen. Ergebnisse der Mikrozensus-Zusatzfragen 4. Quartal 2015. Wien: Statistik Austria
Österreichisches Sozialministeriumsservice
Disability, Ageing and Carers, Australia: Summary of Findings, 2015. Canberra.
Canadian Survey on Disability, 2017.
BMAS (2017). Repräsentativbefragung zur Teilhabe von Menschen mit Behinderung - 1. Zwischenbericht.