Progress on deinstitutionalisation and the development of community living for persons with disabilities in Europe: Are we nearly there?

Abstract

Following the publication of the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with a Disability, the rights and situation of people with disabilities have once again become a focus of national, European and international policy and advocacy. Mansell et al., (2007) identified that there were over 1million people with disabilities in Europe living in institutions of over 30 places in size and almost 1.4 million in some form of residential care. This paper reports findings from a review of national and international sources of data on living situation for 27 European countries as of 2019. Although there had been some changes, especially for children and especially in countries where EU structural funds had been used, there were still 1.4 million people living in residential care, with many still for more than 30 people. People with intellectual and developmental disabilities were those who were most likely to still be in residential services. We consider some of the potential reasons for these findings and discuss what might be needed to really advance deinstitutionalisation.

Point of interest

• People with disabilities have the same rights as everyone else to live in the community. This paper looks at where people with disabilities live and how this has changed over time.

• We found that many people with disabilities still live in institutions and that the number had not changed much since 2007.

• There have been more changes for children than adults. Fewer children now live in institutions.

• People with intellectual disabilities are most likely to still live in institutions and least likely to be living and participating in the community.

• Many countries in Europe still do not have good information about where people with disabilities live and whether they have choice and control or are active citizens.

• There was more change in countries which had received money from the European Union. However, in many countries, there were no plans for how to help more people to live in the community.

Keywords:

• Deinstitutionalisation
• community living
• disability
• inclusion
• human rights
• Europe

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Czech Research Foundation [project number 22-26896S].