Human Rights & Employment

2. Human Rights PWID

2.6. From service users to contributing citizens

Citizenship can be a helpful, contemporary and inclusive framework to promote human rights of persons with intellectual disabilities and provide a source of inspiration for action.

According to Simon Duffy, a social innovator and pioneer of de-institutionalisation in the United Kingdom, citizenship has the following three interrelated dimensions:

•      Freedoms - independent, able to express your own views and build your own life

•      Rights - with rights to support and protection, being free from harm and discrimination

•      Duties - responsible, contributing to family, community and national life.

Citizenship is impossible without each of these dimensions and each supports the other.

 

Starting with an assumption of shared citizenship, we can then seek to build the kind of society that makes citizenship real for everyone. In this way we can work towards building a society that is capable of achieving and balancing three distinct, but interconnected outcomes:

1        Equality - all citizens are equal, not by being the same, but by being equal in status, equal in dignity, within the community.

2        Difference - citizens are different, they bring together different needs and gifts, and it is from the respectful combination of these that community is built.

3        Justice - citizenship is achieved by a shared commitment of community to treat each other as equals and to fund its laws and institutions upon that equality.

 

Simon Duffy argues that being a citizen means living a full life, contributing to and be connected to other people and the community. The Centre for Welfare Reform, a citizen think tank, identified 7 keys to citizenship:

1        Purpose  - Citizens can live with purpose, build on their own distinct gifts and needs and set their own goals.

2        Freedom  - Citizens can be free, can make their own choices and shape the best life that makes sense to them.

3        Money  - Citizens have enough security of income that they are not unduly dependent on other people but can pursue their own goals.

4        Home  - Citizens are part of the community, they have a safe and private home that they can control and use to build a life.

5        Help  - Citizens need other people, they are not isolated, instead they give other people the chance to help and to share their gifts.

6        Life  - Citizens join in community life, they make a difference within their community and they contribute in ways that make sense of their own gifts.

7        Love  - Citizens are part of families, form friendships, fall in love and have their own families.

 

 

The citizenship model provides an account of how people with or without disabilities can come together in society in respectful and sustainable relationships.

For further reading and resources on the concept of citizenship visit the site of Citizen Network,  an international cooperative which brings people together, from all around the world, to support each other to create a world where everyone matters.

 

Activity ideas

 

·        Have you ever felt trapped in "Serviceland" ?

 

 

 

"Life is a daring adventure or nothing at all".  Do you think that this quote can apply to your child with disability?

 

Summary

In this section you have learnt about the rights of people with disability, the danger of exclusion if a person’s rights are compromised, the importance of PWID participating in decision-making and life-planning.

 

In the next section, we will focus on one of the human rights. Choosing one right as more important than others is arbitrary and often dangerous, but it is commonplace for reasons that have more to do with how timely and necessary a certain right is in each society. In this module, focusing on adulthood of people with intellectual disability, we have chosen to focus on the right to employment as it plays an important role in self-realization, self-development, as well as social inclusion.

Our focus will be on two levels: firstly, on the importance of employment for all people, and then especially on people with disabilities.

 

ACTIVITY

According to international research, the percentage of people with severe disability in employment is under 10%. What are the reasons behind this? Which rights of PWID have been breached leading to him/her being unemployed?