PIL manages multi-country studies on disability in the EU for EASPD
At PIL, it is important for us to engage in work that incites positive change. That is why, for over six years, we have been regularly teaming up with the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD) to research critical disability-related topics including the right to vote, inclusive education, sheltered workshops, the needs in training and skills of the workforce supporting persons with disabilities, and the financing of disability support services across the EU.
These multi-country studies enable PIL to present EASPD with the necessary data and information as a basis for lobbying at EU- and Member State-level. The study on sheltered workshops carried out in 2022, for example, looked at both the legislative and practical situation at EU-level, complemented by in-depth views of such workshops’ compliance with the UNCRPD in seven EU Member States. In this thought-provoking assignment, PIL’s Lara Bezzina, Justina Žutautaitė and Fabio Belafatti took pride in ensuring the airing of views from both sides of the debate (those for and those against sheltered workshops), analysing the legal frameworks in which sheltered workshops are embedded, how these workshops function in practice, and the working conditions of service users, among others, in the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Poland and Spain. Based on interviews with EU- and country-level policy makers, entities operating sheltered workshops, and regional and national civil society representatives, the team formulated recommendations - validated in a participatory workshop with members of the EASPD Member Forum on Employment - on the best way forward for persons with disabilities to be able to enjoy a quality of life on an equal basis with others. The study was one of the first systematic attempts to provide a balanced picture of the sheltered labour market’s conditions across the EU. Its results are being utilised in another wide-scale study on alternative employment models for persons with disabilities, commissioned by the European Commission (DG EMPL).
In March 2023, we started working on a study on the transition from special education to inclusive education systems. The study was commissioned by the EASPD in response to growing skepticism around inclusive education and the fact that the number of children learning in special schools or classes has been increasing in some European countries during the last few years. PIL’s Justina Zutautaite and Fabio Belafatti have collected 16 promising policies and practices from 12 European countries that contribute to the transfer of knowledge to support inclusive education. The in-depth case studies may inspire education practitioners and policymakers to adapt these models of knowledge transfer in their own context. That is why we are hosting a webinar to increase the visibility of the study results; the exciting part is that several of the described practices will be presented by the people who are implementing them!