The Open Society Mental Health Initiative

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Spotlight: MHI Partners

 

This section of the MHI website is devoted to highlighting the recent work of MHI's partners. Here you can find project announcements, information about special events, links to online videos, and downloadable publications.
The Down's Syndrome Aid Society Serbia (DSAS) in Belgrade, Serbia, offers community-based supported living options for people with intellectual disabilities. Starting in March, 2004, DSAS implemented a deinstitutionalization project with positive results. DSAS recently published a new brochure that provides important information on deinstitutionalization and community living. More information is available at: http://www.downsindrom.org.yu/ (Serbian language only) or by contacting Dragan Lukic, Leader of the Expert Team on Community Living: d.lukic@sbb.co.yu.

 

To Live Freely...Community Living in Serbia

 

Pentru Voi Foundation in Timisoara, Romania, aims to increase the quality of life for persons with intellectual disabilities. The organization's work is based on the philosophy of inclusion as a basic human right. Currently, Pentru Voi provides community-based day and residential services, supported employment, and advocacy and self-advocacy services. More information is available at: http://www.pentruvoi.ro/index_en.htm.

 

Video: "I Want to Work and I Can Work!"

 

Pentru Voi's Newsletter  

 

 

The Association for Promoting Inclusion (API) in Zagreb, Croatia, is a nongovernmental organization that was established in 1997 with the support of MHI. API's mission is to promote the process of deinstitutionalization and the development of community-based support services for children and adults with intellectual disabilities. More information is available at: http://www.inkluzija.hr/.

 

FILM: API Program of Specialized Foster Family Care for Children with Disabilities 
View the film with English subtitles
View the film with Russian subtitles

Community Living Film: Living Proof

Article: People with Developmental Disabilities - Living as Everyone Else Does

 

The European Coalition for Community Living (ECCL) is a Europe-wide, cross-disability initiative that works towards the social inclusion of people with disabilities by promoting community-based services as an alternative to institutionalization. In its work, ECCL targets relevant parties in all sectors -- at the local, national, and European levels and in government and civil society. ECCL believes that in order for people with disabilities to live as equal citizens they must be allowed to make choices about the situations that affect their daily lives and must have opportunities to actively participate in their communities. Membership of ECCL is open to all organizations and individuals concerned with deinstitutionalization and community living. More information is available at: http://www.community-living.info/.

 

ECCL Newsletters

Focus Report on the Right of Children with Disabilities to Live in the Community

 

The Bulgarian Helsinki Committee is an independent non-governmental organisation for the protection of human rights. The objectives of the committee are to promote respect for the human rights of every individual, to stimulate legislative reform to bring Bulgarian legislation in line with international human rights standards, to trigger public debate on human rights issues, to carry out advocacy for the protection of human rights, and to popularise and make widely available human rights instruments. More information is available at: http://www.bghelsinki.org/index.php?lg=en.

 

Assessment Report: On the Conditions and Perspectives of the Institutions for Children in Bulgaria and of the progress made in implementing the governmental obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child

 

 

The Social Services Initiative (SSI) is a locally registered non-for-profit organization operating in Azerbaijan, a country located in the South Caucasus. The agency focuses on providing technical assistance to the government in reforming the child protection system so that it meets the needs of children with developmental disabilities. SSI promotes social inclusion, diversity, equality, non-discrimination and employs a human-rights based approach in its interventions. SSI promotes the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD) and its principles through initiatives that enable children with disabilities to grow in their communities within a family environment.

 

Currently, SSI carries out several initiatives in Azerbaijan with its multi-disciplinary team. As a local partner of OSI's Mental Health Initiative (MHI), the SSI is implementing a Deinstitutionalization Pilot Project in cooperation with the Ministry of Education, which will establish alternative community-based care and other support services for children residing in one institution for children with intellectual disabilities, and will support the closure/transformation of this institution by 2015. The SSI implements another project with the Ministry of Social Protection in modeling mobile rehabilitation services for children with intellectual disabilities (age group 3-12) in remote rural villages. The model will be scaled up and become part of the ministry's service provision/referral system after 2012. Both projects are financed through a grant from MHI.

 

Advocacy on the implementation of the UNCRPD is another focus area of SSI. With funding from OSI's Disability Rights Initiative, SSI is working at the policy level to contribute to the implementation of provisions of the Convention, including ensuring that the rights of children with disabilities are embedded in national legislation and realized by the government.

  

Deinstitutionalization Pilot Project Case Study (2009), a case study from the Community For All (Azerbaijan Program).


 

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Highlights

1) Dumping Grounds For Forgotten People

An investigation by Bulgarian journalist Yana Buhrer Tavanier on the mental care institutions in Bulgaria, Romania and Serbia.   

Please visit the website dedicated to the investigation and view the new promotional video.


Judith Klein, director of the OSMHI (Open Society Mental Health Initiative) has written a foreword to the article, which appears in the newsletter of the European Coalition for Community Living, Issue No. 10, October 2009 and also on the investigation website.


2) Report of the Ad Hoc Expert Group on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care

A report on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care was handed over to Commissioner Vladimír ?pidla on September 23, 2009. The report was drafted by a group of independent experts convened by Commissioner Spidla in February 2009 to address the issues of institutional care reform in their complexity.  The report is also available in Bulgarian, Croatian, Hungarian, Romanian.

Films

Karin Dom - a training and resource centre for children with special needs and their families

This short film was made following a BBC production about a children's institution in Mogilino, Bulgaria. The film features MHI partner organization Karin Dom and highlights what community-based alternatives for children can be like in Bulgaria.

UN Disability Convention

The Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities received its 20th ratification on April 3, 2008, triggering the entry into force of the Convention and its Optional Protocol on May 3, 2008. This marks a major milestone in the effort to promote, protect and ensure the full and equal enjoyment of all human rights and fundamental freedoms of persons with disabilities, and to promote respect for their inherent dignity.

Information on the convention process:
Convention in Easy to Read
View the list of signatories
Countries that have ratified the Convention
ICRPD Ratification Toolkit
Convention and Inclusive Education
View more information

 

News reports on the Convention:
Agreement on New UN Convention
Urging Implementation
Archive Webcast: Convention Signing 
Record Number of Countries Sign
Secretary-General Ban Hails Entry Into Force Of Treaty On Disability Rights
More news reports

Publications:
UN Handbook for Parliamentarians on the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities and its Optional Protocol
First Implementation Manual For The United Nations Convention On The Rights Of Persons With Disabilities (Addressed Specifically To Users And Survivors Of Psychiatry)


Ratify Now (The campaign to support global grassroots efforts to ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities).

Films about Inclusion

Foster Care for Children with Disabilities: English ** Russian

I Want to Work and I Can Work!

Living Proof: The right to live in the community

Reality - film on personal assistance

Being an Unperson. A short film about the experience of dehumanization within the care system.

In My Language. A short film about autism and nonverbal communication.

A Way of Describing Autism. A short film by Dave Spicer and Amanda Baggs.

Equalise It!

A Manifesto for Disability Equality in Development Cooperation

The international committee of UK Disabled People's Council (formerly BCODP) has written this manifesto in the light of the signing of the UN Convention on the Human Rights of Persons with Disabilities. 

To read the campaign launch letter, please click here.

Organisations who wish to sign up to the Manifesto are asked to contact Bill Albert or Mark Harrison so that their name and logo can be added to the list of signatories.