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Summary: Published by Save the Children UK and Sweden on behalf of the Alliance. The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities represents the culmination of years of advocacy by the disability community in their struggle for recognition of their rights. "See Me, Hear Me" is the first book to look at how this Convention can be used to support disabled children, alongside the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. • Develop and provide training for professionals working with families on the rights of children with disabilities – eg, social workers, psychologists, teachers, doctors, early years professionals. • Consult with parents and children on the support needed to ensure that the rights of children with disabilities are protected within families. Build alliances with parents’ groups to advocate for more resources and services to meet these needs. • Collect examples of breaches of children’s rights to family life. Use these examples with the media, parliamentarians and policy-makers to raise awareness of the need for change. • Promote models of good practice in foster care, community living and adoption.Work with the government to build a campaign to recruit foster carers for children with disabilities. • Challenge violations of the right to family life through the courts. • Gather evidence of the law and practice in respect of sterilisation of children with disabilities and campaign for changes in the law to prohibit the practice. • Work with children with disabilities to produce a film documenting and highlighting the multiple barriers that prevent their inclusion in ordinary life. • Build support among journalists and programme editors to promote positive awareness of disability. • Support the development of an advisory group of children with disabilities who can advise the government on issues of social inclusion and the removal of barriers. • Take a group of parliamentarians together with key representatives from the media to a number of key public places to demonstrate the barriers they impose for children with disabilities. • Campaign for a commitment from the government that it will always consult people with disabilities, including children, when implementing policies which affect social inclusion, eg, the design of new coins, buildings, transport, etc. • Lobby the government to work towards universal design. • Advocate for the introduction of legislation to ensure the equal right of every child to an education without discrimination of any form, on any grounds. • Advocate for an end to segregated ‘special’ education and for the right of all children to a properly supported inclusive education in the general system. • Press the government to provide accurate data on the numbers of children with disabilities in and out of school. • Advocate for strategies to achieve the Education for All goals and MDGs to make explicit provisions to realise the right of children with disabilities to education. • Develop and promote models of good practice in inclusion and participation – how it can be done, what resources and facilities are needed, the impact on children and the educational outcomes. • Develop and provide training resources for teachers on working in inclusive environments. Advocate for this training to be incorporated into pre- and in-service training for all teachers. • Support groups of children with disabilities to become advocates for the right to education. Promote opportunities for them to speak to community groups, school governing bodies, media and government representatives. • Undertake a review of the visibility, participation and treatment of children with disabilities in the media including print, radio and television media. Use the findings to highlight the need for change. • Work with a group of children with disabilities to evaluate the accessibility of local play facilities. Publicise the results an promote ideas from the children about what is needed in order • Lobby the government to introduce regulations requiring all public sports facilities to promote access for children with disabilities. • Advocate for early identification and referrals. • Support a group of children with disabilities to undertake an audit of local hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and health centres in order to assess how disability-friendly they are. • Undertake a survey of reproductive health services to find out their policies on services to young people with disabilities. • Launch a campaign for equal treatment. • Press for the inclusion of training on the rights of children with disabilities in the training of all health professionals – doctors, nurses, dentists, physiotherapists, etc. • Develop a series of case examples or vignettes relating to children’s involvement in healthcare decisions. Organise focus groups with health professionals, and then with children with disabilities to explore how they react to the scenarios and how they differ in their perceptions of children’s capacities for informed decision-making. Use the findings to raise awareness and sensitivity on the issues. • Collect evidence on the experiences of poverty faced by families with a child with a disability and use the data to advocate for effective social security provisions for children with disabilities and their families. • Encourage the media to make a television or radio programme following the life of a child with disabilities for a month to highlight the poverty experienced and the case for enhanced social protection. • Launch a campaign to expose the practice of maiming children in order to make them work as beggars. • Enlist the support of paediatricians and academics to undertake research into the injuries caused to working children and the scale of disability associated with child labour. • Gather evidence of prevalence and severity of physical and sexual violence against children with disabilities. • Launch a high-profile campaign to highlight the scale of the violence. • Lobby the government to prohibit all forms of violence, including all corporal punishment, sexual violence and harmful traditional practices. • Lobby the government to introduce legislation providing full protection for children with disabilities in residential institutions, including schools, together with an independent inspectorate with powers to review all aspects of care. • Develop resources for children with disabilities on their right to protection from all forms of violence, and disseminate through media, schools, health facilities and youth associations. • Review the child protection procedures that exist and assess their accessibility and appropriateness for children with disabilities. • Support children with disabilities to take cases of complaint to the appropriate authorities when their right to protection from all forms of violence is violated. Advocacy tips on the right to justice and liberty • Develop and provide training for all professionals working in the justice system on the rights of children with disabilities. • Develop guidance on how to establish disability- and child-friendly courts. • Encourage the government to undertake research on children in detention to find out how many have disabilities and the effect that this had on their sentence and subsequent experience in detention. Advocacy tips on rights in situations of emergency and conflict • Work with the relevant UN agencies to ensure that in emergency preparedness programmes, the rights of children with disabilities are fully recognised and incorporated. • Advocate to ensure that assistance to children who are victims of landmines addresses: data collection, emergency and continuing medical care, physical rehabilitation and prosthetics, psychological support and social reintegration, economic reintegration, and disability laws and policies. • Consult with children with disabilities in post-emergency situations on their experiences and ideas on what is needed to ensure their protection in such situations.
These advocacy are extracted from "See Me, Hear Me: A guide to using the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities to promote the rights of children".
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MENU: Right to family life - Right to social inclusion - Right to education - Right to participate in play, cultural life, recreation, leisure and sport - Right to best possible health - Right to an adequate standard of living - Right to protection from all forms of violence - Right to justice and liberty - Rights in situations of emergency and conflict
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Advocacy tips on the right to family life
• Review the legislation on detention and institutionalisation of children with disabilities. Advocate for changes that provide them with the same rights to family life as other children.
Advocacy tips on the right to social inclusion
Advocacy tips on the right to education
Advocacy tips on the right to participate in play, cultural life, recreation, leisure and sport
for them to use these facilities.
Advocacy tips on the right to best possible health
• Conduct research into the experiences of children with disabilities in healthcare services. Use the findings to advocate for the necessary changes to protect their right to the best possible healthcare.
Advocacy tips on the right to an adequate standard of living
Advocacy tips on the right to protection from all forms of violence
For more information, or to buy a hard copy of this publication, go to: http://www.savethechildren.org.uk/en/54_7644.htm