Equality & Rights Committees in Disability Services
Making Equality & Rights Real – The Project
IIn 2017, Inclusion Ireland completed a year-long project funded by the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission. The project was directed by a Steering Committee made up of 7 people with lived experience of intellectual disability. This Steering Committee was central to all aspects of the project.
The project involved people with intellectual disabilities being trained to deliver equality and rights training to their peers and professionals in disability services. This training was piloted at three events in Dublin, Cork, and Sligo.
The project also involved bringing over 150 people together at two separate national learning and sharing events. These events – and the project in general – brought people together to talk of what equality and rights mean to them, share their experiences, and discuss ways to promote equality and human rights in services and communities around the country.
The project developed a toolkit for setting up equality and rights committees in disability services.
The Equality and Rights Committee Toolkit
Many disability services around the country have what are called ‘Rights Committees’ in place. These Rights Committees usually look at rights restrictions in services and say whether they are OK or not. However, there are no national guidelines for how these committees should work. Inclusion Ireland wanted to change this by running a project that will develop good-practice guidelines for these committees.
This project produced a toolkit that can be used to set up ‘Equality and Rights Committees’ in disability services. The Equality and Rights Committee can promote equality and human rights in the service. The toolkit is available for you to download, print and keep.
