Deinstitutionalisation: Planning inclusion in Greece

Across the European Union, hundreds of thousands of persons with disabilities, persons with mental health problems, older people and children live in segregated institutions. These were originally created to provide care, food and shelter, but proved to be harmful to their quality of life and participation in the community and wider society.

Greece is among the Member States in which the European Commission identified the need for deinstitutionalisation (DI) reforms to create support systems in the community. To meet these objectives, the government has worked alongside experts and stakeholders representing different sectors in society including the three target groups of the reform: children (including children with disabilities), adults with disabilities and older people with support needs.

Join us for our final conference as we mark the official launch of the Greek Deinstitutionalisation Strategy, Action Plan, the Strategic Roadmap and more tools created within the project.

Civil society, public authorities and key participants also look to evaluate the process and discuss the key elements for a successful DI (deinstitutionalisation) transition.

The country requested a technical support for the government and stakeholders in:

1. Completing the DI national Strategy, Roadmap and Action Plan;
2. Defining and implementing processes and methodologies to run and manage the DI programme;
3. Developing a communication and outreach strategy with communication materials, and support plan for receiving communities;
4. Developing and providing training programmes to support the DI process.

These objectives were reached over the last two years with the support of European Association of Service Providers for Persons with Disabilities (EASPD – a non-profit NGO in the disability sector, promotes the views of over 17,000 social services and their umbrella associations. There are over 80 million people with a disability throughout Europe. The main objective of EASPD is to promote equal opportunities for people with disabilities through effective and high-quality service systems), experts and stakeholders representing different sectors in society including the three target groups of the reform: children (including children with disabilities), adults with disabilities and older people with support needs.