Includ-ed, red europea de educación inclusiva

Resumen

Established in July 1994, Fish is a Federation of National Associations and Clubs that aims to promote policies to overcome handicaps, starting with the new vision of the bio-psycho-social disabilities through the principles of protecting human and civil rights of persons with Disability and the UN Standard Rules. 

Action: to ensure non-discrimination, equality of opportunity and social inclusion in all spheres of life. 

Priority: work for the promotion of the rights of persons with disabilities, including those with complex needs unable to represent themselves; harmonizing, in collaboration with the National Disability Council (CND), national policies with European ones.

Público objetivo

national, regional and provincial member associations of persons with disabilities

Actividades

It’s primary action is the policy and activity coordination among national, regional and provincial member associations, in a fully democratic and participatory framework so as to represent a unitary voice of persons with disabilities on specific topics, counting inclusive education, before the Government, Parliament and other national institutions such as the Unified State-Regions Conference. It does so also through its “program of activities”, a document which is defined, voted and adopted during its Ordinary Congress (every three years).

With the enactment of Law 67 "Measures for the judicial protection of persons with disabilities are victims of discrimination" which recognizes and affirms the principle of rejection of all forms of discrimination, the Federation could avail itself of a crucial tool in supporting its overall objective which remains that of identifying and fight all forms of discrimination, also in the light of the recently adopted UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities (CRPD). To this end, the Federation set up a national centre for study and research on anti-discrimination issues called EmpowerNet, with the goal to create awareness about the new instruments and consequently stimulate the processes reformulation of associative operational strategies. 

In addition, among its statutory bodies, FISH set un a National Observatory on inclusive education. It is composed by national experts on this issue and it is chaired by FISH’s vice-president. It meets on a regular basis in order to define position papers and common policy lines to share with governmental technical working groups of which it is member (with consultative status) at national, regional and local level. It also serves as a research forum in charge of monitoring the implementation of all relevant laws and practices with regards to inclusive education based on normative grounds. In fact, Italy can boast more than 30 years of inclusive educational system that, notwithstanding its unique achievement, still needs monitoring and leaves room for enhancement.

Additionally, FISH follows up to its policy strategies fostering good practices among its member associations and, itself, conceived a project called “School keys” (Le chiavi di scuola) in A.Y. 2006/2007 which has been repeated each year since. To-day, more than 900 schools participated to this initiative submitting projects, activities, training courses.. Starting from the idea of changing perspectives on disability also by praising good practices already in place rather than highlighting negative cases,   “school keys” awards three cases of inclusive education full practices and, among the selection criteria, that of direct participation of the entire class (thus including students with disabilities), the teaching staff and local governments is a key element. A dedicated website has been created: www.lechiavidiscuola.it