Our evidence to the Joint Committee on Human Rights concerns Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, the right to respect to private life, with specific reference to the European Court of Human Rights' interpretation of this article as including a right to participate in the life of one's local community. We would also wish to reference the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities that states that disabled persons have equal access to human rights—their rights are in no sense diminished because of any disability.

  The Judith Trust is a small organisation that works to improve the quality of life for people with both a learning disability and mental health needs. The Trust supports multi-disciplinary, preventative and innovative approaches. It pays particular attention to the needs of women and Jewish people.

  In October 2003 the Trust commissioned research that looked at the importance of being Jewish to people with learning disabilities and their families. This research found that being Jewish was very important to this group and that they derived a great deal of satisfaction from being able to participate fully in their community. However, the research also found that this was often difficult—barriers were placed in the way and the promotion of inclusion was usually not a high priority.

  The Judith Trust heard stories from parents whose children had been refused a bar- (or a bat-) mitzvah within their own congregation: an important life event for Jewish people. This refusal is often borne from ignorance about learning disability, as well as a lack of accessible learning materials that would help individuals reach the appropriate and required levels of understanding. Partly it may be based on interpretation of biblical statements that may be read differently and in more enabling ways and there are examples of good inclusive practice by various synagogues.

  The research also found a great deal of stigma attached to having a child with a learning disability within the Jewish community, which led parents to feel isolated and ashamed of and for their children, and adults with learning disabilities to become alienated from the community. People felt there was a general lack of tolerance from within the community.

  The main barriers to people accessing this very important right to participate fully in their community range from a `benign' lack of understand of people with learning disabilities to more worrying abuse of rights such as intolerance and discrimination. It is compounded further by a lack of accessible resources.

  The Judith Trust would like to see more effort made the UK government to ensure that people with a learning disability are able to participate in the spiritual life of their chosen community. This would involve a greater effort to stamp out intolerance and discrimination of people with learning disability, with particular attention paid to communities that might be more prone to discrimination for cultural reasons.

  The Trust expects the UK government to make greater efforts to ensure that religious organisations are fully informed of the priority it places on equality for all. The Trust also draws attention to the fact that power relations within faith communities are also often unequal with girls and women less valued and not able to participate fully and equally with men in their communities. This, too, should not be left unquestioned in the noble attempt to achieve a society free of such inequality or abuse of human rights.

  Such efforts on the part of government should form an ordinary part of the work of the new Commission for Equality and Human Rights which must seek to formulate policies to promote equality across the 6 strands. The Trust is concerned that religious faiths are encouraged to think through the meaning of equality within their communities as well as working to establish their own status vis a vis the other five strands and the wider society at large.

May 2007