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Description
Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are lifelong developmental disorders that prevent people from properly understanding what they see, hear and generally feel. As a result, they face serious problems in their social relationships, communication and behavior.
Institutions, in cooperation with families, should lead the effort to inform and educate, dispelling myths and focusing on the rights of people with disabilities, as enshrined in all international conventions and the national legal framework. Many efforts have been made, but they are often fragmentary. The plethora of scattered laws and regulations makes it difficult to claim and enforce the rights of people with ASD.
The project will contribute to the solution by creating an easy-to-use Internet legal framework for codifying the legislation concerning people with ASD, which will provide information and support to a set of connected users of involved parties. An important element of the database will be the guidance of users in cases of violation of the rights of people with ASD regarding the legal ways of claiming their rights.
In the context of this project, there will be the possibility of linking the database with other relevant websites and the data will be updated at least annually or in significant changes of the institutional framework of the current legislation.
The creation of the online legal framework will be framed by:
- Training activities for public officials who manage issues of rights of people with ASD (Community Centers and Social Services of Municipalities).
- Platform presentation actions combined with awareness actions on Panhellenic rights issues.
- Training activities for people with ASD with high mental capacity to understand their rights and acquire self- advocacy skills using the content of the database.
Summary of project results
The project''s online legal database serves as a great tool in the hands of people with autism, their families, public officials, private professionals and institutions. The main outcome of the project was the creation of an online legal base to which everyone has free access (http://dikaioma.autismthessaly). To better promote the database and disseminate its results, user-friendly instructions were created, along with matching educational/informative material. The materials were distributed widely, through four online education/awareness raising workshops and a final workshop, which included use of the database so far. The workshops on the presentation and operation of the legal database were attended by public officials, parents of children with autism, agency representatives, other mental health and education professionals. 479 applications of participation were received in total, with 251 of them belonging to public officials.
The database, with all its content and information, serves as a model legislative basis for the needs of people with autism and their families, as well as public and private sector professionals, that are often lost in the legal administrative steps surrounding access to rights for people with autism. The impact of the project is considered positive by the beneficiaries, who contacted the CSO, in order to identify and exercise their rights, as well as by other organizations and public services, who sought clarifications around the legislation for people with autism and their families. More than 4,695 beneficiaries entered the legal base, were informed about its functioning and gained free and easy access to crucial knowledge on their daily rights. The project may have been implemented in the rural area of Larissa, as this is the base of the organization, but the users of the database are already from every corner of the country. The dissemination of information in an accessible and easy to understand way unravels the labyrinthine of the Greek legislative framework on autism, and improves the daily lives of people with autism and of their families. The CSO successfully combined the database with a pre-existing "Support Line", using the database as the main tool of the telephone line in order to provide immediate assistance to requests of legal nature. Lastly, the Regional Observatory of Social Inclusion of Thessaly Region incorporated the database in its web portal, acknowledging its accuracy and usefulness.