The Expertise Centre Independent Living has already issued two reports on personal assistance in Sweden (please see the June and October 2009 newsletters). After redaction of these reports however it soon became clear that we were unable to investigate important aspects because of the linguistic barrier.
Read more

June 2010 conference Independent Living in Ghent

In June 2010 the Expertise Centre Independent Living will celebrate its second anniversary. So this is the right time to present the results of the hard work that has been done. That is why we organize a three-day congress in Ghent, Belgium at the start of June.
Read more

At the beginning of this new year we gladly offer you the third edition of our newsletter. 2010 promises to be a crucial year for us.

The Expertise Centre started out as a two-year project financed by EFRO means. In June we will organize a three-day conference where we shall present the results of our work to a broad and even international audience. We hope that this provisional endpoint at the same time may prove a new beginning. In this way the conference may serve both as a climax and the beginning of a next phase.

For the following months this means: searching and lobbying for new budgets. The Expertise Centre wants to keep on investing in the gathering and expanding of its expertise with regard to direct payments. We hope to be able to initiate further investigations and in that way be a thriving force in innovation in the care. Innovation but also emancipationof us, disabled people and our representatives, so that we may control our own lives independently.

In the newsletter you can read more about the visit to Sweden by Juliska van Hauwermeiren. Not only did she have interesting conversations with people working in users cooperative societies, she also signed a contract with Adolf Rätzka’s Independent Living Institute (ILI). In the coming months the Swedes of ILI will be working on a report which will specifically focus on the way in which needs assessment and budget calculation is carried out in their country. Another topic of the research concerns the effect of market forces on the care offer.

Care offer is also mentioned in the article about the Netherlands. It seems to be that a great deal of new initiatives have been developed over the last few years and that the holders of a personal budget (PGB) are considered the real innovators of the care in the Netherlands.

Yet market forces are also a subject of polemic. In his report Peter Lambreghts gives us the outlines of this debate. Healso tries to free the debate from its ideological burden by focusing on the preconditions: turning demand steering work into a mechanism which shapes the care offer instead of the bureaucratic system used in Flanders.

This newsletter has been set up in such a way that you receive a simple e-mail with an introduction and a summary of all articles. If you click on the links, you will be referred to the full texts with source references.

Do uou have any news with regard to direct payments? The actual situation in your country, recent evolutions or newly publicized study reports on the matter? We would gladly include that kind of information in our next newsletter or publish it on our website.

We hope you can appreciate this information. We welcome any reaction at info@independentliving.be

Thank you for your interest and feel free to forward this newsletter.

Elke Decruynaere

Coordinator of the Expertise Centre Independent Living.

The Expertise Centre Independent Living has already issued two reports on personal assistance in Sweden (please see the June and October 2009 newsletters).

After redaction of these reports however it soon became clear that we were unable to investigate important aspects because of the linguistic barrier. It seemed to us that the right thing to do was to have some fundamental questions answered by Swedish users of personal assistance. This led us to the idea to submit a research proposal and to present it to Swedish experts. Several candidates responded to our call, which was also published in our last newsletter, and so we were faced with the task to choose amongst these very fine candidates. Ultimately we selected the proposal of the Independent Living Institute. We shall present the results of this investigation at the congress that the Expertise Centre Independent Living will organize in June 2010.

In order to discuss the agreement with Independent Living Institute one of our staff members went to Stockholm. At the same time our staff member visited some cooperative societies. Björn Jideus of the cooperative society JAG and Nicoletta Zoannos and Suzanne Elmqvist of the cooperative society STIL were so kind to dedicate their time in order to explain the functioning of their organization. Also Davy Gaeremynck, a Flemish expatriate who nowadays works for ILI but who was formerly employed at STIL, was prepared to elucidate us on several issues.

We would like to gratefully thank all those who have contributed to the realization of this article through their cooperation!

Read the full article about the visit to Sweden.

With over more than 111,000 budget holders the personal budget (PGB) represents more than 2 billion Euro. Notwithstanding the fact that the initial experiment which served as a starting point for the personal budget already dates back to 1991, PGB is still not an enforceable right in the Netherlands. However, now that more and more people are making use of the budget system and now that the possibilities which it offers are increasing, there is an increasing call for making it enforceable.

This article was preceded by the report on direct payments in the care in 8 European countries. That report already briefly described the functioning and the amplitude of the PGB in the Netherlands. We will now go deeper into that. The article starts with a description of the general framework of the PGB. Next we shall concentrate on the needs assessment. Who is eligible and how is this determined? A very interesting question is how a budget is determined on the basis of such a needs assessment. Another matter is the impact of the PGB on the care offer. It happens to be so that the PGB served as an impulse for a whole array of new initiatives.

We shall also publish interesting research material about people who are paid with the PGB. And finally we shall concentrate on the budget holder’s position. In what way are they supported? Are they being properly informed? Do they control their own budget? Do they have the possibility to enforce their right to a PGB? That’s where the problem lies. Although this seems to be only a theoretical problem for the time being given the fact that the total maximum budget is recalculated every year. Whether this will continue to be so is still unsure. For the moment the government tries to do something about the increasing budget mainly by reducing the number as well as the type of claims to the PGB. The article concludes with a description of some recent evolutions and even with a look forward by presenting three possible scenarios for the future.

Read the article about PGB in the Netherlands.

Market forces in the support of disabled people: Position statement