European Centre for Excellence on Personal Assistance Project (ECEPA)

The Center for Independent Living Carmichael House is currently involved in a project with eight other transnational partners and co-funded by the European Union. This project entitled 'the European Centre on Personal Assistance' aims to create, and see implemented, a European Wide Policy on Personal Assistance.

People with extensive disabilities, ie. those who depend on practical assistance from others in their daily lives, constitute the social group with the lowest education, employment rates, income and social contacts. The main catalyst for this situation lies not in a lack of physical and mental capability but in a lack of mainstream education and training, lack of barrier-free housing in the community, barrier-free transportation, barrier-free workplaces and outright prejudice and discrimination - forcing and keeping this group in residential institutions and parental homes, robbing them of their life opportunities and undermining their self-esteem and consequently their self-fulfilling prophecies. ECEPA believe that the key to breaking this continuing vicious cycle is user controlled personal assistance services.

"A voice of our own is needed to break our present dependence on service providers and other professional experts and to present facts, convincing arguments and politically viable solutions that promote self-determination in every-day life and break the culture of dependence that our group has been exposed to for far too long”.

ECEPA's task is to:

function as the voice of personal assistance users in Europe
combine and focus the expertise of personal assistance users towards raising their quality of life throughout Europe
work for a European-wide policy on personal assistance.

Planned Activities

Comparative policy analysis of the labour market aspects of personal assistance in Europe resulting in recommendations.
Comparative research on the prevalence of institutionalisation and forced parental home accommodation of persons who depend in their daily lives on personal assistance.
Comparative policy analysis in the area of personal assistance in Europe.
Documentation and dissemination of examples of good practice.
Drafting of model national legislation for personal assistance programmes that are to aid the disabled individual in the transition from youth to working life and its estimated impact on the national labour market.
Drafting of a Europe-wide policy on personal assistance to promote the geographical mobility of personal assistance users across national borders.
Virtual library and electronic newsletter on personal assistance.

ECEPA's main activity in 2004 will consist of a policy analysis of personal assistance concerning assistance users' and assistance' participation in the national and European labour markets. The study will focus on several European countries, including Ireland. All activities will take place over the coming two years with responsibility for each delegated to the eight transnational partners.

ECEPA have already produced a National Policy Model on Personal Assistance. We urge you to read this proposal and should you support it contact us at info@dublincil.org

Click here to view the ECEPA website.

Return to top of page

Contact Us

European Centre for Excellence on Personal Assistance Project (ECEPA)