The following problem areas were highlighted at the project’s first targeted advocacy meeting in February:
- Methodology tailored to individual disability is lacking in practice.
- Despite their health and mental condition, if opinions state that they need care and support, it is translated as the need for a guardian and the environmental and social barriers cannot be considered.
- There is no system of objective legal criteria.
- The guardianship office pushes cases to court because it is uncertain about the relationship between the two proceedings in decision-making.
- There is no training for the supporter, the parents.
Participants of the meeting could start working together along with the following key issues:
- Dissemination of knowledge. In everyday life, information about supported decision-making does not even reach a wider audience, it is often confused with guardianship. Despite our experience, few have heard of supported decision-making, despite the fact that it has had a legal basis since 2013. During the project, we asked experiential experts how to make this legal institution better known. Awareness-raising and assistance of guardianship offices and notaries are important for those concerned, families, and the wider society. What steps could they take to do this?
- Among the issues in the narrower legal sense, the issue of the limitation of liability in the relationship between the sponsor and the caretaker and the situation of the supported decision-making of the people living in the institution arose during the project. These may be, among other things, the main issues on which we can focus in joint action. What is court experience?
- Preparation of a draft amendment to the act on supported decision-making, based on previous research and professional materials.