Disabled Persons’ Associations in France

Abstract

In the years following the First World War, the first associations of disabled civilians were formed, to demand the same rights and measures for professional integration as those granted to victims of war and of accidents in the workplace, and to create institutions for rehabilitation. After the Second World War, associations of parents of disabled children began to create specialized institutions for children who were impaired or failing at school. The field of disability was built on the model of rehabilitation in a type of mixed economy, with associations managing institutions and the State financing and regulating them. From the 1980s, the gradual emergence of users’ associations claiming equal rights and the right to autonomy on the one hand, and the “Europeanization” of associative actors on the other, led to a reorientation of public policies.

Notes

1. The number of wounded is estimated at 1,500,000 over a three-year period, for France.

2. This law met a dual political need: that of turning the individuals into citizens by teaching them the mechanisms of representative democracy (election of boards of directors and of representatives) and by regulating civil society's participation in political debates.

3. The aim of this form of mediation between the politico-administrative elite and public action by civil society was to work together to give direction to public policies. It is characteristic of the French system for developing public policies in the various different areas of economic and social development (agriculture, defense, health, social action) during periods of economic growth (Jobert & Muller 1987).

4. CNCPH was to have its role and functions redefined and extended as part of major legislative reforms in 2002 and 2005. Since 2002 it has been made up of 65 members, of which 24 are family or disabled persons’ associations, 17 are associations or public organizations working on behalf of disabled persons, 4 are representatives of local communities, 5 are social protection organizations, 10 are representatives of employee and employer unions and 4 are research organizations.

5. Its founders, Martine Dutoit-Sola and Claude Deutsch, are the authors of Usagers de la psychiatrie: de la disqualification à la dignité (Paris: Erès), 2001.

6. At the same time, another group of 10 associations was brought together by the GIHP (a member not only of the Group of 29, but also of the CFHE and the OMPH/DPI (Organisation mondiale des personnes handicapées/Disabled Peoples’ International)) to make up this very same French representative committee at the European Forum: the French Group for Disabled Persons (Groupement Français des Personnes Handicapées; GFPH), comprising the New French Association for Persons with Multiple Sclerosis (Nouvelle Association Française des Scléroses en Plaques; NAFSEP), Association of Gerontology (Service d'Aide aux personnes âgées; AGEMO), National Association for the Defence of Ill, Impaired and Disabled Persons (Association nationale de défense des Malades, Invalides et Handicapés; AMI), National Association for Parents of Blind Children (Association nationale des Parents d'Enfants Aveugles; ANPEA), National Association for the Integration of Persons with Motor Deficiencies (Association Nationale pour l'Intégration des Handicapés Moteurs; ANPIHM), Association of Disabled Persons in Public Research (Association pour le Travail des Handicapés dans la Recherche Publique; ATHAREP), Croisade Des Aveugles (Crusade for Blind People), National Federation of Deaf Persons in France (Fédération Nationale des Sourds de France; FNSF), National Union of Persons with Polio in France (Union Nationale des polios de France; UNPF) and UNAPEI. Most of these 10 associations, although not managerial, were ideologically not very different from the dominant movement, and worked along the traditional lines of defending and supporting disabled persons and their families. In attempting to obtain the official status of French committee for this group of associations, GHIP/DPI and its chairman Jean-Luc Simon aimed to strengthen their identity as non-managerial and as a national mouthpiece, with the objective of carrying more weight in French debate. The GFPH's application was turned down in favour of the other candidate committee, CFHE.