The Policy Project research comprised of three research areas; DFID UK research, in-country research, and a series of small-scale research projects.

Its purpose, managed by Healthlink Worldwide, was 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) to provide DFID with expert technical policy analysis on disability issues.

DFID research
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".

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.

See the DFID research section to download the full reports >>

In-country research
The Policy Officer's mapping report recommended that the mainstreaming of disability should become a central concern of the entire programme. This underpinned further research commissioned by the Policy officer and three research projects that were carried out in India, Rwanda and Cambodia. The research aimed to be relevant and useful to the DFID country offices themselves, as well as the work of Policy Division and in particular the new Exclusion, Rights and Justice (ERJ) Team.

See the In-country research section to download the full reports >>

Small-scale research
A further four in-country research projects were commissioned by the Project Policy Officer. The three of these were carried out by disabled researchers in the South and the fourth involved disabled people in every aspect of the work. These projects looked at:

• Capacity building of disabled people’s organisations in Mozambique
• The role and effectiveness of disability legislation in South Africa
• Participation of disabled people in the PRSP and PEAP processes in Uganda
• Developing participatory rural appraisal approaches with disabled people in Cambodia

See the small-scale research section to download the full-reports >>