Assessment of the rights of people with intellectual disabilities: a preliminary study

During the last years important advances have been achieved in the protection of the rights of people with intellectual disabilities. In that sense, the most significant advance has been the ratification of the he U. N. Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities. However, there is a lack of research on the monitoring and assessment of the ways in which the Convention is being applied. The goal of this study was to carry out an exploratory investigation about the implementation of human rights of persons with disabilities in Spain using a double perspective: self-report of the persons with intellectual disabilities (INTEGRAL Scale), and observations of the staff working with them (GENCAT Scale). Results allow us to conclude that there are still many abuse and negligence situations. In addition, differences depending on the methodology used are discussed, and the urgent need for assessing the Convention implementation in a systematic way is pointed out.