The Equalities and Human Rights Commission (EHRC) will be carrying out an inquiry into the actions of public authorities such as local authorities, to eliminate disability related harassment and its causes.

Earlier this year KCIL responded to the Commission's consultation to agree a Terms of Reference for the inquiry. The Terms of Reference will determine what kind of cases should be looked at by the commission. The Terms of Reference for the Inquiry has now been published and the commission can now gather evidence.

The commission would now like to hear from people who have been bullied or harassed because of their disability or if your family members have been bullied and harassed because you are disabled. In addition, organisations that work with deaf and disabled people are able to provide evidence to the inquiry.

The only way we can change things for the better for disabled people is by sharing our experiences with the commission. This will help them to make recommendations to the public bodies to improve the way they deal with hate crime to, and harassment of, disabled people.

The commission will be collecting evidence until 10^th September 2010. They are specifically interested in finding out about:

- effective approaches to preventing and eliminating disability-related harassment 
- addressing the causes of disability-related harassment including prejudice and negative attitudes
- involving disabled people in the prevention and elimination of disability-related harassment and addressing its causes
- enabling disabled people to effectively report disability-related harassment
- the diverse experiences and needs of disabled people related to their impairment type, age, gender, gender identity, race or ethnicity, religion or belief and sexual orientation.

The Commission welcomes both positive and negative experiences as the former may help them to include good practice in their recommendations.

The Royal Borough of Kingston will be organising an event in order to gather experiences of hate crime and harassment from local disabled people and the organisations that support them. RBK will then make a formal response to the Commission's call for evidence. We will publish the date and details of the event on this website www.kcil.org.uk .

If you would like to respond independently please see the link to further information at the end of this article.

How the Inquiry Came About

Last year the EHRC carried out research into the safety and security of disabled people in Britain. The findings included the following evidence:

- Disabled people are at greater risk of experiencing violence than non-disabled people.
- Disabled children and young people and disabled women, particularly those with learning disabilities, are particularly at risk.
- Ongoing ‘low-level’ incidents are widespread and may go undetected but may escalate at some point. These incidents are often ignored by public agencies even though they have a significant impact on disabled people.
- Disabled people restructure their lives to minimise real and perceived risk to themselves even if they have not experienced targeted violence personally.

Based on the evidence from the research, the Commission decided that the only way forward was to ensure that disabled people were able to successfully seek, and get, justice when crimes are committed against them or they are harassed because of their disability.

The Commission is committed to redressing the injustice that disabled people have previously experienced and this is the reason they are conducting a full inquiry.

For further information

Follow this link to the Equalities and Human Rights Commission website:

http://www.equalityhumanrights.com/legislative-framework/formal-inquiries/inquiry-into-disability-related-harassment/