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The activities below represent some strategies your organization can use to support the ability of people with disabilities to have relationships, marry and have children.

Use your mouse or keyboard to expand each of the activity headings below. To add an activity to your action plan, select the Add button beside it.

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Challenge and address stigma, prejudice and discrimination

People with disabilities often face negative attitudes, perceptions and practices against them in their communities. CBR can help to change this by ways:

  • Working with the media to promote positive images and role models of people with disabilities
  • Supporting disability awareness training for health professionals to ensure that sexual and reproductive health services are accessible to people with disabilities
  • Working with leaders in the community to encourage them to create awareness about disability, challenge stigma and discrimination, and create opportunities for community discussions about sensitive issues
Provide support to parents
Family

In order to make good parenting decisions, parents need to have access to information and support. CBR should consider both parents with disabilities and parents of people with disabilities. They can provide support by:

  • Identifying local services that can provide support to parents
  • Advocating with disabled people’s organizations and others for the inclusion of parents with disabilities, and parents of people with disabilities, in mainstream services and programmes
  • Developing and supporting referral systems to facilitate access for people with disabilities, especially women and adolescents, to services and programmes
  • Working with service providers to distribute accurate information on sexual and reproductive health in accessible formats through CBR networks
Work with families to promote independence
Fam

Sometimes families overprotect their members with disabilities by sheltering them in the home and preventing them from socializing in the community, thus limiting their opportunities to develop relationships with others or to develop various skills and abilities. CBR can work with families to:

  • Provide information and support to address their concerns regarding their members with disabilities, as well as for their own position and status within the community
  • Help families to recognize the negative consequences of overprotection
  • Encourage family members to become advocates for changing negative attitudes within the community
  • Support people with disabilities to effectively communicate and self-advocate for their own needs and wants
Support people with limited social networks

Some people with disabilities may not have families, or their families may not be able to provide them with the support and assistance they need. Because of this they may live in residential institutions, hostels, religious communities or sheltered housing, or they may be homeless. CBR can do several things to help in these situations:

  • Link people with disabilities to appropriate support networks in the community (e.g. disabled people’s organizations and self-help groups)
  • Work with residential institutions to ensure people with disabilities are still able to participate and be included in community life
  • Support people with disabilities to access their preferred living arrangements
  • Support people with disabilities who are homeless to find appropriate accommodation
  • Watch for any indications of violence in the settings in which people with disabilities live
Help to prevent violence
Participation-of-disabled-people

CBR works across different many environments, including in homes, schools, workplaces and communities. Because of its broad reach and connectedness, CBR is in a good position to help ensure that strong social networks and supports are in place to protect people with disabilities from violence. Also see the Justice element in this module. CBR programmes can:

  • Build the capacity of CBR staff to recognize the signs and symptoms of violence, ensuring they know where to access appropriate legal advice and support for people with disabilities
  • Raise awareness within communities about violence and disability and about actions that can be taken to protect people with disabilities
  • Establish links with relevant stakeholders and talk to them about their role in protecting people with disabilities from violence
  • Develop procedures with stakeholders that enable people with disabilities to report episodes of violence in confidence
  • Provide information about violence to people with disabilities and ensure they know how they can report episodes of violence confidentially
  • Ensure people with disabilities have opportunities to participate in community life to increase their self-esteem and confidence, and develop social networks that will protect them from violence
  • Support people with disabilities who have experienced episodes of violence by talking with them, assisting them to access health-care services, and assisting them to develop solutions and take action
  • Ensure that policies are in place to check that CBR staff and volunteers have no criminal history of violence

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