Anne-Marie Callus - The Disabled Childs Participation Rights

THE DISABLED CHILDS PARTICIPATION RIGHTS

The United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities is the only UN treaty to date in which the people who are its target, that is disabled people, were actively involved in its drafting and the only one which requires the active participation of disabled people in its implementation. This does not, of course, automatically guarantee the direct participation of all disabled people. This is especially so for children with disabilities, whose status as legal minors may inhibit them from participating in decisions affecting their lives.

This book focuses on the participation rights of the disabled child with regard to health, education, home life and relationships, highlighting ways in which these rights are safeguarded and promoted throughout the EU, as well as exploring the factors that put these rights at risk. Finally, this groundbreaking text analyses whether disabled childrens needs for assistance in order to realise their participation rights results in fewer opportunities to participate or in an increase in support in order for them to be able to do so.

Anne-Marie Callus is Lecturer in the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta, Malta. She is also Executive Director of the National Commission for Persons with Disability in Malta.

Ruth Farrugia is Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Laws at the University of Malta, Malta. She is a legal consultant to Maltas Commissioner for Children and was was commissioned by the Maltese government to draft both the gender Equality Act and the Childrens.

Interdisciplinary Disability Studies

Series Editor:

Mark Sherry, The University of Toledo, USA

Disability studies has made great strides in exploring power and the body. This series extends the interdisciplinary dialogue between disability studies and other fields by asking how disability studies can influence a particular field. It will show how a deep engagement with disability studies changes our understanding of the following fields: sociology, literary studies, gender studies, bioethics, social work, law, education, and history. This ground-breaking series identifies both the practical and theoretical implications of such an interdisciplinary dialogue and challenges people in disability studies as well as other disciplinary fields to critically reflect on their professional praxis in terms of theory, practice, and methods.

Other titles in the series

Youth and Disability

A Challenge to Mr Reasonable

Jenny Slater

Communication, Sport and Disability

The Case of Power Soccer

Michael S. Jeffress

Hearing Impairment and Hearing Disability

Towards a Paradigm Change in Hearing Services

Edited by Anthony Hogan and Rebecca Philips

Disability and Qualitative Inquiry

Methods for Rethinking an Ableist World

Edited by Ronald J. Berger and Laura S. Lorenz

Forthcoming titles in the series

The Fantasy of Disability

Images of Loss in Popular Culture

Jeffrey Preston

Sport and the Female Disabled Body

Elisabet Apelmo

The Disabled Childs Participation Rights

ANNE-MARIE CALLUS and RUTH FARRUGIA

First published 2016

by Routledge

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and by Routledge

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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2016 Anne-Marie Callus and Ruth Farrugia

The right of Anne-Marie Callus and Ruth Farrugia to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by their in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

Callus, Anne-Marie, author.

The disabled childs participation rights / by Anne-Marie Callus and Ruth

Farrugia.

pages cm. (Interdisciplinary disability studies)

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4724-2857-8 (hardback) ISBN 978-1-4724-2858-5 (ebk PDF) ISBN 978-1-4724-2859-2 (epub) 1. Children with disabilitiesLegal status, laws, etc.Europe. 2. Children with disabilitiesMedical careLaw and legislationEurope. 3. Children with disabilitiesEducationLaw and legislationEurope. 4. Childrens rightsEurope. I. Farrugia, Ruth, author. II. Title.

KJC3490.C35 2016

346.401'38083dc23

2015034251

ISBN: 9781472428578 (hbk)

ISBN: 9781315615509 (ebk)

Typeset in Garamond

by Apex CoVantage, LLC

This book is about the right of the disabled child to participate in decisionmaking processes that affect their lives. Participation can take place at different levels, from asking the disabled child for their views about specific aspects of their lives to their being actively involved in making major decisions. The right of the disabled child to participate in these processes is enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Child (CRC) and upheld in the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). This book uses the requirements of these two Conventions as its basis. In line with the latter Convention, it considers disability to be the outcome of the interaction between people with impairments and the societal barriers that they encounter. In considering different aspects of disabled childrens lives, namely health, education, home life and relationships, the book reviews their rights as they are stated in the CRC and CRPD and then focuses specifically on their right to participate in decisions related to these areas. The book brings together the study of Law and Disability Studies as well as Childhood Studies. Disabled children are thus seen as holders of rights and as human beings in their own right, rather than incomplete human beings or, as Qvorturp (1994, cited in Tisdall and Punch 2012) puts it, human becomings.

This book has a largely European focus, concentrating mostly (but not exclusively) on the member states of the European Union. It draws from international human rights treaties, case law of the European Court of Human Rights, official reports and other documents as well as the relevant research literature, especially that literature which includes disabled childrens voices. After a detailed description of the background to the development of disabled peoples rights in the first chapter, it examines the scope for participation in decision-making that disabled children enjoy in their everyday lives, identifying the factors that promote or hinder participation in the different aspects of life analysed in the next four chapters. The final chapter brings together the main points elicited from these analyses and puts forward recommendations to ensure that the realisation of the participation rights of the disabled child does not happen sporadically but in a systematic fashion. For this to happen, the exercise of participation rights by disabled children, whatever shape or form it may take, should not be contingent on the presence of adults who happen to believe in its importance and have the skills to make it happen. Adults need to fully understand what is meant when one speaks of the disabled childs participation rights, and learn how to make these rights a reality.