The DFID Policy Project, managed by Healthlink Worldwide, was created to assist DFID to develop policies and processes to support the mainstreaming of disability and to ensure that the Disability KaR’s knowledge and research outputs are responsive to DFID’s needs and effectively communicated to DFID.

The Policy Project saw the placement of the Disability Policy Officer in DFID (Philippa Thomas): the Officer's position was pivotal to the entire programme. The post provided expert technical policy analysis and support to DFID on disability issues, while ensuring that other parts of the programme were responsive to DFID's needs.

The officer's first task was a detailed mapping of DFID and disability issues, the report of which concluded that although there were scattered disability initiatives, disability had not been mainstreamed within the Department. This corresponded with that of another report commissioned by the Disability KaR programme at the same time, "Disability KaR: Assessing connections to DFID’s poverty agenda".

Subsequently the mainstreaming of disability became a central concern of the entire programme and underpinned further research commissioned by the Policy officer (see the in-country research section and the small-scale research section).

A final report by the Policy Officer; "Disability, Poverty and the Millennium Development Goals: Relevance, challenges and opportunities for DFID", brought together all of the Policy Officer's work as well as findings from other parts of Disability KaR in a comprehensive set of recommendations on the way forward for DFID and disability.

The reports can be downloaded in the Research papers section, Policy project.