Giving Compass' Take:

• Here are five steps for how philanthropy can integrate disability rights when providing support or services during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

• How are you incorporating disability rights into your philanthropy? 

• Learn why disability rights are central to social justice work. 

As philanthropy considers its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, integrating a disability rights perspective can help us move toward a more equitable future, rather than return to the same systems that have pushed so many communities to precarity.

Disabled people find themselves in increasingly precarious and vulnerable situations in the current global health crisis. Everything from pre-existing medical conditions that affect the respiratory or immune systems to socio-economic conditions to living arrangements has led to deep inequalities in who is suffering currently.

For those who rely on support from medical care workers, family members, or other such personal support, disabled people – who are already more vulnerable to this virus and its socio-economic effects – face impossible choices when it comes to social distancing: either disabled people place themselves and their staff at greater risk because they cannot do without personal support, or they are deprived of their right to access primary health care, rehabilitation services, and the like, because it has been deemed a non-essential service.

Much media attention has been directed toward the crisis in institutional settings such as long-term care homes for the elderly. Yet, organisations of – and allied with – disabled people have been sounding the alarm about the dangers of institutional care for decades. Many people with disabilities are denied their rights to decision making and life in community, being institutionalised – and even incarcerated – for lack of investment in community-based models of care and support of persons who require assistance with activities of daily living.

Five steps foundations can take now

  1. It’s not just about what we fund, but how we embody our values.
  2. Intersectionality: Disability Rights is a Human Rights Issue
  3. Drive systems change by funding community-based supports and services
  4. Funding service provision? Make sure they are accessible to persons with disabilities
  5. Collect disability-disaggregated data

Read the full article about disability rights by Myroslava Tataryn at Alliance Magazine.