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Between June 1 and August 18, 2018, Kerala experienced the worst floods ever since 1924. The torrential rains triggered several landslides and forced the release of excess water from 37 dams across the state, aggravating the flood impact. Nearly 341 landslides were reported from 10 districts. The devastating floods and landslides affected 5.4 million people, displaced 1.4 million people, and took 433 lives. The Government reports that 1,259 out of 1,664 villages spread across the state’s 14 districts were affected.  The floods and landslides caused extensive damage to house, roads, railways, bridges, power supplies, communications networks, and other infrastructure; washed away crops and livestock. The Post Disaster Needs Assessment (PDNA) conducted by the UN under the leadership of the Government of Kerala estimates the total Recovery needs to be at USD 4.4 billion.

The PDNA is the global methodology developed by the UN, the World Bank and the European Union to assess damage and loss in the wake of disaster and to recommend the recovery needs and strategies. In all, 76 experts from 10 UN agencies and European Union across 13 sectors collaborated to develop the report in 20 days. The UN agencies included, UNDP, UNICEF, UNESCO, UN Women, UNFPA, UNEP, WHO, WFP, ILO and FAO.

An inclusive and people centred approach is a pillar of the policy framework for recovery and the effects on people with disabilities are briefly assessed. Over 8,600 PWDs are reported to have been impacted by this disaster

Aim: The aim is to assess whether the national policy for evidence-based rehabilitation with a focus on facilitating return-to-work is being implemented in health-care units in Sweden and which factors influence its implementation.

Methods: A survey design was used to investigate the implementation. Data were collected at county council management level (process leaders) and clinical level (clinicians in primary and secondary care) using web surveys. Data were analyzed using SPSS, presented as descriptive statistics.

Results: The response rate among the process leaders was 88% (n = 30). Twenty-eight percent reported that they had already introduced workplace interventions. A majority of the county councils’ process leaders responded that the national policy was not clearly defined. The response rate among clinicians was 72% (n = 580). Few clinicians working with patients with common mental disorders or musculoskeletal disorders responded that they were in contact with a patient’s employer, the occupational health services or the employment office (9–18%). Nearly, all clinicians responded that they often/always discuss work-related problems with their patients.

Conclusions: The policy had been implemented or was to be implemented before the end of 2015. Lack of clearly stated goals, training, and guidelines were, however, barriers to implementation.

Article 33 (2) of the CRPD requires state parties to have a structural framework in place to promote, protect and monitor the implementation of the Convention on the Rights of Person with Disabilities (CRPD) at the national level. This “2017 Update Survey”, conducted by the German Institute for Human Rights, was done to identify the current situation how state parties implement these provisions. National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) from all continents participated in the survey. A comparison of the results of the 2017 Update Survey with those of similar survey conducted in 2011 indicates that there is a positive trend towards the strengthening of the role of National Human Rights Institution in the context of the CRPD in terms of numbers – either as the bearers of sole responsibility or responsibility shared with others. 

Annexes are provided containing concluding observations, the questionnaire used and a table of survey responses.

Over the course of a three-year project the Leonard Cheshire Research Centre worked with research teams in four countries: Kenya, Sierra Leone, Uganda and Zambia to better understand the relationship between disability and development in each country across four domains: education, health, labour markets and social protection. This mixed methods research used a range of interrelated components, including policy and secondary data analysis, a household survey of 4,839 households (13,597 adults and 10,756 children), 55 focus group discussions and 112 key informant interviews across the four countries. 

This report explores key findings in relation to education. Key findings discussed include school attendance, cost of education, inability to learn and gap in educational attainment.

Published in 2011, the Grand Challenges in Global Mental Health initiative provided a framework to guide the research needed to improve treatment and prevention of mental health disorders and expand access to mental health services. At the Academy’s workshop on global mental health participants reflected on progress since 2011, focusing on specific life-course stages, and identified priorities for research in treatment and prevention, as well as enduring challenges and emerging opportunities

This learning resource is the result of a partnership between World Vision Australia and CBM Australia that aims to improve inclusion of people with disabilities in World Vision’s Water, Hygiene and Sanitation (WASH) initiatives, including in Sri Lanka. The guidelines are based on experiences and observations from World Vision’s implementation of the Rural Integrated WASH 3 (RIWASH 3) project in Jaffna District, Northern Province, funded by the Australian Government’s Civil Society WASH Fund 2. The four year project commenced in 2014. It aimed to improve the ability of WASH actors to sustain services, increase adoption of improved hygiene practices, and increase equitable use of water and sanitation facilities of target communities within 11 Grama Niladari Divisions (GNDs) in Jaffna District.

To support disability inclusion within the project, World Vision partnered with CBM Australia. CBM Australia has focused on building capacities of partners for disability
inclusion, fostering connections with local Disabled People’s Organisations, and providing technical guidance on disability inclusion within planned activities. World Vision also partnered with the Northern Province Consortium of the Organizations for the Differently Abled (NPCODA) for disability assessment, technical support and capacity building on inclusion of people with disabilities in the project.

HYGIENE AT HOME FOR PEOPLE WITH HIGH SUPPORT NEEDS
This document is one of two developed in the Jaffna District and describes strategies that used to assist households and individuals in hygiene tasks at home. The strategies were designed to be low cost and were developed using locally available materials and skills in the Jaffna District of Sri Lanka.

NOTE: The development of this learning resource was funded by the Australian Government's Civil Society WASH Fund 2.

Mental health problems are commonplace and affect more than one in four people worldwide. They are responsible for a quarter of all disabilities. This document aims to provide a basis for exploring these concepts as part of more in-depth work, including an update of the 2011 mental health framework document.

A seminar was held in Kigali, Rwanda on 7 - 9 December 2017. It brought together 45 participants from 12 countries to think about and discuss community mental health concepts and practices. The objectives of this document are twofold:

• Set out analysis by an external expert, with a focus on community mental health at HI, in light of the literature and concepts and practices within the sector

• Undertake preliminary work to identify new concepts for implementation, based on the aspects covered in the seminar, as part of ongoing in-depth work in this area, including the updating of the 2011 mental health framework document.

Case histories from Rwanda, Lebanon and Madascagar are given. There is an extensive bibliography in the Annex

This document is intended for HI and partner staff members who work in the mental health and psychosocial support sector. It is also intended for HI staff working on mental health strategy. It can also be used to feed into the work of field staff developing, implementing and assessing mental health and psychsocial support programmes

This qualitative study explores Swedish case workers experiences of decision making regarding disabled children's right to obtain assistance in their everyday life whereby they can live independently in the community. Data collection included seven focus-group interviews and 11 complementary individual interviews with case workers from different agencies responsible for decisions regardig access to personal assistance. Grounded theory methodology was used. Compromised professional integrity under shifting conditions emerged as a main concern and maintaing professional integrity was used as an approach to resolve it. The case workers are maintaining professional integrity by applying different strategies; struggling with division of responsibility, bureaucratizig, and justifying and protecting. The results indicate that present application of assessment criteria in combination with the utilization of precedent rulings has made it difficult for the case workers to make decisions that provide children access to assistance. Current practice raises questions about the case workers perspectives of professionalism.

Purpose: Examining everyday challenges in the interactions between people with intellectual disabilities and their staff, as seen from the user’s perspective, is an important perspective in health care research. Involving people with intellectual disabilities as so-called co-researchers is a relatively unexplored research strategy. In this paper, co-researchers participated in all the steps of the research process, from planning to reporting, in addition to the written reporting of the findings. The aim of this study was to explore how people with intellectual disabilities experienced a filmed vignette of an everyday situation.

Method: Based on audio-recorded and transcribed individual and focus-group interviews with people with intellectual disabil- ities, performed by co-researchers with intellectual disabilities together with researchers, qualitative content analysis was used.

Results: The analysis reveals three themes: “being emotionally touched”, “being aware of the other”, and “being unclear”.

Conclusions: The results are discussed in light of normalization and participation in society with independence and one’s own decision-making. Regarding the care of people with intellectual disabilities, the main finding is the need to focus not only on greater involvement of this population in their own daily lives, but also to teach self-determination skills. Another finding is the importance of involving people with intellectual impairment as co-researchers.