Developing an ILMI Position Paper on realising Article 25 of the UNCRPD

What is the need

Article 25 of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) places obligations on the State to ensure that disabled people access the highest standards of healthcare without discrimination. 

Developing an ILMI vision for systems change in the provision of Health Services to meet our needs as Disabled People 

ILMI is creating a series of thematic discussion spaces to develop our own vision for inclusive, accessible and affordable health services for disabled people.

There is often an assumption that in wanting to move away from the medical model of disability that ILMI as a DPO will not want to examine health inequalities. However, the social model informs access to systems and services, and disabled people need to be given the space to develop specific systems changes in relation to health service provision outside of provision of disability services. 

The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) is currently working on a whole of Government approach and with key stakeholders (including DPOs) to develop a new National Disability Strategy, which will be the first implementation strategy for the UNCRPD in Ireland. 

One of the pillars will be Health and wellbeing and as this strategy develops an implementation strategy, ILMI needs to have clear targets for systems change that has been developed through an authentic DPO process. 

How can ILMI do this? : We can learn from ILMI’s PAS NOW campaign in that:

• We created spaces for disabled people to move from how dysfunctional the PAS system is towards disabled people identifying based on their expertise on how the system should change
• We built shared analysis for disabled people to bring to politicians and policy makers
• We as a DPO led the narrative on how thing needed to change on clear but interlinked themes: 
• Defining the PAS, standardising PAS, investing in PAS, promotion PAS and legislating for PAS.  

When will these workshops take place and what will they cover?

Over the course of October and November, ILMI is creating a series of online discussions for Disabled People in order to build a shared analysis on to inform how to build and develop an accessible, inclusive and affordable health care service for Disabled People. The workshop details are as follows: 

1. Consent, Independent Living and medical care, including Advanced Care Directives and Disabled People Thursday 26^th September 
2. Disabled Women and access to health care Monday 30^th September
3. Access to primary health care: GPs, Public Health Nurses, Primary Health Care, Dentists, Occupational Therapy (OT), Physiotherapy, Speech and Language Therapy) Thursday 3^rd October
4. Access to acute care (hospitals such as A&Es and surgery) Tuesday 8^th October 
5. Reproductive Health Care, IVF and AHR Thursday 10^th October 
6. Health screening programmes Tuesday 15^th October
7. Access to health care information and digital health Thursday 17^th October
8. Disability and cost of health care Tuesday 22^nd October 
9. Health systems and structures: how can disabled people influence the health system? Thursday 24^th October

These online discussions will take place on Zoom over September and October. All discussions will take place from 11am to 1pm on the dates listed above. If people are unable to make specific discussions but wish to feed in, ILMI will make arrangements for other ways to have your say. 

Output: what will this process deliver? 

• ILMI will have its own vision for systems change to build expectations for disabled people in accessing health.
• ILMI will have an analysis on what needs to change on different levels. 
• ILMI can share this analysis with disabled people to inform local and national policy discussions (especially in relation to a new CRPD implantation strategy)
• ILMI can focus on key thematic policy issues under our Social Justice value in our new strategic plan to take strategic actions. 

If you only wish to register for a specific discussion, please let us know or you can register for as many workshops as you would like.