The political goal and the aim of Swedish disability policy today is to give persons with disabilities the same opportunities as others to participate in society and to live together with others - the principles of normalisation and integration. Two particular acts came into force on the 1st of January 1994, the Act concerning Support and Service for Persons with Certain Functional Impairments (LSS) and the Act concerning Assistance Compensation (LASS). LSS gives persons with severe functional disabilities, either physical or mental, the legal right to 10 different kinds of support and services. One of the most important elements in LSS is the right to personal assistance. The idea of personal assistance is to provide support that is tailor-made to the individual as far as possible and to optimise the person's influence over how the support is arranged. The aim of this article is to describe and analyse the right personal assistance from an administrative perspective. The focus is on the application and decision process and the development of this support during the years.

Challenges and opportunities for social citizenship in the “third age”.

The aging of Europe is a social phenomenon characterized by decrease in fertility,  increase in mortality rate and higher life expectance - a challenge and opportunity to European social models.

Researchers from different academic backgrounds have tried to describe and analyse aging and different ways of entering the later part of the life course. Due to the increasing life expectancy there has been a need to divide old age in different phases - near-aged (55-64), young-old (65-74), old-old (75-84) and oldest old (85+) or an alternative division of life in four stages - the first is childhood and youth; the second contains the phase of working life and parental activities; the third age is a flexible period that starts with retirement whenever it occurs and continue until the fourth age, normally around the eighties; the fourth age consist increasing fragility and need of support in daily activities. "The Third age" can sometimes be described as “the crown of life”, empathising self-fulfilment, while the Fourth age entails dependency, fragility and death.

The combination of demographic and socioeconomic development has provided the condition for a new kind of “later lifers”. The fact that more people are getting into the third age can be analyzed in many ways. One is to realize that opportunities will arise for new constellations of power groups, groups which create new agendas with new priorities claiming their rights, by law or by m oral obligations. Another question is  to ask in what way people will use their time after retirement – another career, voluntary work,  family support or taking an active part in the community.

The presentation will focus on different aspects of social citizenship like citizen self-responsibility and choice, participation and solidarity during their third age as a preparation for a possibly postponed fourth age.

Det har länge funnits en debatt, internationellt och nationellt, om hur forskning om funktionshinder och om situationen för personer med funktionsnedsättning, ska genomföras. Det handlar bl. a. om vem som ska bedriva forskning, vilket perspektiv man ska ha, hur personer med egna erfarenheter av funktionshinder ska deltaga, hur man ska gå tillväga metodologiskt, hur resultaten ska tolkas, vem som äger resultaten och hur de ska publiceras.

Brukarmedverkan och delaktighet har under senare år diskuterats inom alla områden som berör utsatta grupper, så även inom funktionshinderforskningen. De frågor som kommer att beröras i denna presentation är makt och inflytande- för vem, var, när och hur. Slutfrågan blir: hur gör jag i ett nu aktuellt projekt? Utgångspunkten tas i erfarenheter från ett antal projekt genomförda från mitten av 1990talet fram till dags dato.