Lumos Foundation in partnership with the Child Rights Centre is implementing 20 months project “Empowering children/young people with disabilities to improve responses to Child Abuse and Neglect” funded by Delegation of the European Union to the Republic of Serbia under the EIDHR programme. The project is implemented in Republic of Serbia.
The project has following objectives:
The overall objective of the action is to assist Serbian civil society to combat discrimination against children/young people with disabilities and promote democratic reform by increasing their political participation in addressing their human rights.
Specific objectives:
- Empower children/young people with disabilities to participate in changing legislation and practice that affects them.
- Improve professional responses to child abuse and neglect (CAN) of children/young people with disabilities.
- Ensure participation of children/young people with disabilities in the political process is mainstreamed and sustainable.
- Demonstrate how participation of self-advocates, professionals and politicians can assist a country to fulfil its international human rights obligations.
These will be achieved by:
- Strengthening the nascent child participation groups that involve children with intellectual disability; providing them with an opportunity to continue their work and to influence policy and practices on an issue they see as of great concern – namely, the abuse and neglect of children with disabilities.
- Providing an opportunity for children with intellectual disabilities, their families, professionals and politicians to work together on a programme that will directly improve policies on CAN for children with disabilities. This will be done through the already established National Working Group (NWG), by helping them to translate their National Action Plan on the BHBL Declaration into practice. This in turn assists Serbia to fulfil its responsibilities under the CRC, CRPD and helps to address areas of concern identified by the EU.
- Providing high quality training to multi-disciplinary groups of professionals, whose practice will improve. This in turn will result in greater access to protection and justice for children with disabilities who are abused.
- Modelling good practices by employing young people with intellectual disabilities, who will work as co-trainers. This will provide employment, but also demonstrate how the inclusion of children and young people with intellectual disabilities actually improves outcomes in addressing issues that relate to them.
