4(C)(iv). Dora lives in the community but is denied support services

Facts

Dora is aged 51 and recently left a psychiatric institution where she lived for ten years. In the community she has experienced serious difficulties in finding and maintaining appropriate housing and other support services. The country she lives in does not have a well-developed system of community-based support services for people with mental disabilities. Having been segregated for a decade, she has no friends or other supports to rely on in the community. She has been homeless for several periods, and ended up back in the psychiatric institution for several months at a time.

Discussion

1. Community supports: It is clear that the State has provided Dora with no or inadequate supports to enable her to live in the community. This is a point which lawyers should litigate strongly. Article 19(b) of the CRPD requires governments to roll out a network of community support services for people with mental disabilities. If there are in practice no options other than living in a social care institution, Dora has to choose between institutionalisation and homelessness. Lawyers should argue that this makes a mockery of the notion of “choice” in Article 19(a), and the obligation to provide services under Article 19(b). Lawyers could also argue that Dora’s rehabilitation rights under Article 26 of the CRPD have been violated. They could also argue that her right to housing under Article 28 of the CRPD has been compromised.
    
2. Liberty: Dora has her liberty now, but lawyers may want to investigate the legality of her detention in the psychiatric hospitals, especially if the only reason she was living there, and was readmitted there, was because of a lack of community support services. 
    
3. Privacy, family and home: A lawyer could argue that Dora’s right to respect for a home is violated if she has nowhere to live.
    
4. Non-discrimination: This may be an issue, depending on the availability of community housing and other supports for people without mental disabilities. Not providing reasonable accommodation in the manner in which housing and other supports are provided may mean that the State has taken a discriminatory approach to Dora as a person with mental health issues (which constitutes disability-based discrimination for the purposes of the CRPD and the ECHR).
    
5. Access to justice: Lawyers should ask questions about the availability of information to Dora on how to litigate the violations of her other rights, how to appeal negative decisions in relation to housing, and access to legal aid to assert her rights.
    
6. Fair trial: This will only become an issue if Dora has access to the justice system in the first place and then there is a lack of reasonable accommodations or other issues with the proceedings.
    
7. Conditions: This is not an issue in this case.