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Project

Reconsidering capacity and protection in psychosocial and intellectual disability care. From hard cases to good laws.

May we intervene in the sexual life of a person with a psychosocial or intellectual disability if we suspect abuse? Traditionally we may if he is unable to decide. However, since the rise of the social model of disability and the UN Disability Convention, this is no longer certain. The capacity to make a decision must not be denied because of adisability. This raises a normative debate on the desirability of the social model in hard cases. Do we systematically want protection to lose out to autonomy? First however we should know how the social model differs from today’s legal solutions. We do not. Therefor this research aims to find out how the social model differs from the current legal solutions for hard cases on forced care and sexuality. The concepts used in the debate are purged out, and the approach of the social model is compared to how Flanders, the Netherlands, England and Wales, and Spain deal with hard cases in psychiatric care, intellectual disability care and dementia care. These insights on the implications of the social model creates a legal seed-bed for the important debate on the 'autonomy versus protection debate' in care.
Date:26 Feb 2019 →  30 Sep 2020
Keywords:UN Convention on the Rights of Persons w, Social model of disabilty, Legal capacity, Psychosocial and intellectual disability
Disciplines:Social law