!!!Behindertenwesen

Disabled Persons, Legal Status of: The legal position of the disabled 
in the Austrian legal system is determined by a great number of legal 
regulations at provincial as well as at federal level. The reason for 
the fragmentation of this field of law is that the Austrian 
Constitution does not assign competences for the concerns of disabled 
persons. This is also one reason why no uniform concept has been 
defined describing disability as a basis for rights, duties and 
(social) benefits.

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Concerns of disabled persons in the context of social law are dealt 
with by the provincial authorities either in the framework of general 
public assistance, or within separate welfare acts for disabled or 
blind persons. According to these regulations, disabled people are 
generally entitled to payments in kind, such as medical aid, 
institutional care, orthopaedic care, occupational therapy and 
placement in a  Sheltered Workshop. However, these entitlements are 
only of a subsidiary nature, i.e. they may only be claimed if the 
disabled person has no title to help arising from other legal 
provisions and cannot, as may be the case in isolated cases, achieve a 
reasonable degree of self-sufficiency.

\\
The granting of attendance allowances for persons needing care was 
standardised at the federal level in the Federal Attendance Allowance 
Act (BPGG, Federal Law Gazette 1993/110), which entered into force on 
July 1, 1993. Up to that date, direct payments based on various 
sources of law had been made at provincial and federal level. Payments 
were standardised in order to effectively guarantee care and 
assistance in cases of persistent need.

\\
Austrian labour law promotes the integration of the disabled into 
working life and is aimed at making up for prevailing competitive 
disadvantages. The Employment of Disabled Persons Act (BEinstG, 
Federal Law Gazette 1970/22), for example, obliges employers with 25 
or more employees to also engage disabled persons. This does not give 
individual handicapped persons a claim to employment, but employers 
who fail to conform have to pay a compensation tax to a public fund. 
The money so accumulated is primarily used to promote employment of 
the disabled. One way to do this is to establish sheltered workshops 
and to support a workplace layout adequate to the needs of the 
disabled person. The Employment of Disabled Persons Act also provides 
for special protection from dismissal in order to prevent handicapped 
persons from being ousted from the labour market. They may only be 
dismissed after the relevant committee of the provincial Office for 
the Disabled has given its consent and after consultation of the 
Office of the Provincial Government responsible for the execution of 
the relevant provincial law. Without its approval the dismissal has no 
legal effect.

!Literature
Fingerzeige fuer behinderte Menschen, ed. by the Federal 
Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs; C. Badelt and A. Oesterle, Zur 
Lebenssituation behinderter Menschen in Oesterreich, 1993.


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