The Right to Live in the Community
Seminar of the European Coalition for Community Living
Brussels, 17 May 2006
The Right to Live in the Community seminar is the first event organised by the European Coalition for Community Living. Its participants will include self-advocates and users/survivors of psychiatry, representatives of disability organisations and de-institutionalisation initiatives, representatives of service providers, academic institutions, governments and the European Commission.
Aims of the Seminar
- To strengthen ECCL as a Europe-wide initiative working towards the provision of community-based services as an alternative to institutionalisation;
- To facilitate exchange of ideas and experience among organisations and individuals working on de-institutionalisation and the development of community-based services across Europe;
- To identify key issues in de-institutionalisation and the development of community-based services, which will form a part of ECCL's strategy;
- To generate European-level publicity on de-institutionalisation and ECCL.
Activities
To achieve these aims, the seminar will:
- Address specific issues connected to de-institutionalisation and development of community-based services;
- Address some of the existing obstacles to de-institutionalisation in Europe, and provide possible solutions on how to overcome them;
- Highlight positive developments in de-institutionalisation in some European countries and use those to point to the lack of progress in other countries;
- Provide recommendations for the development of ECCL strategy in terms of issues which ECCL needs to address and principles it needs to promote;
- Allow ECCL to network with other de-institutionalisation initiatives in Europe.
Topics
The following topics will be discussed in three parallel focus groups:
- Disabled people as a driving force for de-institutionalisation
- Quality in service delivery
- Strategies for de-institutionalisation
The seminar will be moderated by representatives of ECCL's founding organisations - Autism Europe, the Center for Policy Studies of the Central European University, the European Network of Independent Living, Inclusion Europe, Mental Health Europe and the Open Society Mental Health Initiative.