The Independent Living Movement

The Independent Living Movement

The independent living Movement evolved in the United States in the 1970s as a response of disabled people to their historic experience of exclusion and discrimination. 

See European Coalition for Community living here and European Network on independent living (eNil) here.

In Ireland, the Department of Health Report – Towards an Independent Future published in 1996, recommended that each Health Board, in consultation with the co-ordinating committee, should examine the viability of establishing in its area small independent domestic dwellings with support, as recently established by the Irish Wheelchair Association in Galway. The report of 1996 proposed that health boards and voluntary bodies providing services to people with disabilities should liaise closely with social housing organisations and local authorities to ensure that an adequate number of accessible houses was available to people with disabilities who wished to pursue this option. 

Today, in the Irish context, the philosophy of Independent Living finds expression in:

Disability Act 2005, 

The Citizens Information Act 2007, 

Equality Act 2004, 

Employment Equality Act 1998,

The Equal Status Act 2000,

The  Education For Persons With Special Educational Needs Act 2004 and in 

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.

In relation to de-institutionalisation, a movement across Europe towards community living has been examined in a recent report in relation to outcomes and costs in 28 countries. This Tizard Report points out that increasingly the goal of services for people with disabilities is seen not as the provision of a particular type of building or programme, but as the provision of a flexible range of help and resources, which can be assembled and adjusted as needed, to enable all people with disabilities to live their lives in the way that they want, but with the support and protection that they need.  

In Ireland, Independent Living is advanced by the Centre for Independent Living Network Council, which includes all 25 irish Centres for Independent Living since 2005. 

The report by the Disability Federation of Ireland/Citizens Information Board (DFi/CiB) in 2007 – The Right Living Space Housing and Accommodation Needs of People with Disabilities, pointed to a need for new thinking which would address the accommodation and related support needs of people with disabilities in the context of social inclusiveness, equality of access and the provision of accessible and integrated living environments. This approach would be significantly different to the approach which views the accommodation needs of people with disabilities as being met primarily in the context of “special needs housing”.