This article appeared in Asia Pacific Disability Rehabilitation Journal 2009, Volume 20, no.1. Reprinted here with permission

 After nearly 30 years of experience worldwide, CBR is still struggling to gain recognition as a legitimate model of service-provision to disabled people. It claims that it is an effective, cost-efficient, sustainable model needing to be borne out by evidence. In this regard we have sought to present some considerations, and identify that there are different levels at which to explore different kinds of evidence. First, it was noted that there are promising possibilities for obtaining and incorporating evidence at the direct service-provision and CBR technique level.

    Disabled Peoples’ Organizations are a mirror of society and reflect both the beauty as well as the cruelty that we see in society. As much as society excludes people, DPOs also include some and exclude others. DPOs exclude for instance, rehabilitation personnel, largely because of suspected professional paternalism among these people; but they also exclude other disabled people: depending on the type of organization they may exclude people who have epilepsy or people who have communication disorders.