Following her meeting with members of the European Expert Group on Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care (EEG) in Brussels on 6 December 2012, High Commissioner Pillay has sent letters in support of such a transition to all EU Member States.

“The support of the High Commissioner is of critical importance for us,” says Luk Zelderloo, the Secretary-General of the European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD), which shares the rotating chairmanship of the group with Eurochild and OHCHR. “We need to bring the way in which national and European funds are spent in line with the States’ and EU’s obligations stemming from the Convention on Rights of Persons with Disabilities – particularly its article 19, which lays down the right to independent living.”

“Instead of investing into institutional care, as many States did in the previous period, they should stimulate the development of support services in the community, such as personal assistance, family support services, housing adaptations and assistive technologies, all of which facilitate independent living and inclusion in the community,” adds Ines Bulić, the main author of the Common European Guidelines and Toolkit on the Transition from Institutional to Community-based Care. The creation and publication of the Guidelines and Toolkit were supported by the European Commission, firstly through a joint foreword by two Commissioners, but also financially by providing translations of the documents into several languages.

Mária Herczog, a member of the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child and President of Eurochild, emphasizes that States should also use their resources to further the enjoyment of the rights of the child in line with the Committee’s jurisprudence. She points to the importance of the 2009 UN Guidelines on the Alternative Care of Children as a major source of inspiration: “In many European countries, particularly in Central and Eastern Europe, many children are still placed in institutions due to poverty or disability. But the UN Guidelines lay down that poverty should not be a reason for placement into alternative care, let alone into institutions. What these countries need is support for families in difficulties and, in those cases where separation from parents is really in the child’s best interest, the development of family-type care.”

“The group has already contributed to reform processes under way in several States,” points out its third co-chair, OHCHR Regional Representative for Europe Jan Jařab. “Bulgaria was the first, but others are following.” At the launch of the Guidelines in the European Economic and Social Committee, the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Lithuania and Slovakia all presented their commitments to reforms, welcoming the EEG’s Guidelines and Toolkit.

Created in 2009, the EEG is a broad coalition of non-governmental and inter-governmental organizations. It includes Eurochild, European Disability Forum, Inclusion Europe (persons with intellectual disabilities), Mental Health Europe, European Network for Independent Living/European Coalition for Community Living, Lumos (children), COFACE (families) and FEANTSA (homeless people) as well as EASPD, the European Social Network, Open Society Foundations, OHCHR and UNICEF.