On Rights Based Services For People With Disabilities PDF Download

This thesis assesses current law and policy regulating both statutory and voluntary advocacy services in Ireland and Victoria. Its primary focus will be on the potential for advocacy to improve access to legal entitlements for people with disabilities and support the right to personal autonomy. In order to achieve these aims, it is argued that a right to advocacy for people with disabilities can be implied from international human rights norms and that advocacy should therefore be regulated at domestic level in accordance with principles of best practice derived from these norms. Following the enactment of legislative anti-discrimination provisions in Ireland and Australia, there has been increasing recognition of the need for further proactive measures to ensure the substantative equality of people with disabilities. This thesis argues that advocacy is one such measure, since it acts as a mechanism for enforcing rights and can also support people with disabilities in exercising their legal capacity. In these ways, a right to advocacy has the potential to further the paradigm shift from welfare to rights-based legal provision for people with disabilities as enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, in order to achieve this aim, the regulation of statutory and voluntary advocacy at domestic level in both Ireland and Victoria must be based on principles of best practice derived from established universal human rights norms. Otherwise, advocacy will be simply viewed as yet another a discretionary welfare provision, thus undermining the notion of effective citizenship which the disability rights movement has sought for several decades. This thesis will examine the extent to which two jurisdictions {u2013} one which is beginning to recognise the need for formal advocacy structures, and one which has over 20 years of experience in regulating advocacy {u2013} are compliant with principles derived from international human rights norms.