Development Secretary Justine Greening at the launch of the updated Disability Framework on International Day of Persons with Disabilities emphasised the fact that the barriers that people with disabilities face aren’t just physical.
She further said that, ‘disable people face a complex set of challenges that we have to address and the consequences of not doing it means that we will have this status quo, that we have currently got, where we know that people with disabilities are more likely to be unemployed, they are less likely to get to school, in some cases they literally won’t be able to participate in life. So it is vital that we make more progress on this.
‘Not a particularly big change for us was to say that if we are involved in building schools then they should be able to be accessible for everyone. When you look at how much that might put up the cost it’s literally half of one percent. But it makes a transformational difference.’
In Ghana, DFID are now working on putting in extra physicians who are particularly able to provide support to people with mental health and psychosocial impairments.
Through UK Aid Match we have been working with Sightsavers which is enabling us to do very simple operations but ones that make a transformational difference in people lives, and their broader community.
So the key for us has been around not just to have disability being part of what we do – but fundamentally mainstreaming it through all of our work. So whatever project we are looking at we look at it through the lens of how can we make progress on development and disability through this particular programme. So that means coming back to looking at some of the physical, practical barriers. It also means looking at some of those broad social barriers.
But also critically on this issue of stigma and discrimination. It is such an important area to focus on but it is complex, it’s difficult. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t challenge ourselves to try and tackle some of the underlying reasons why, in spite of all the work that we might do on physical things and practical things that can help, in the end there’s a society piece of this too.
