Over the past two decades, there has been increasing recognition of the ways in which disabled children and adults have been denied human and civil rights that others take for granted. In the year 2000, the 1998 Human Rights Act came into force in the United Kingdom. This book reviews the implications of the Act for disabled people. The book provides a clear and accessible account of the potential of the Human Rights Act to make a positive difference in relation to issues that have been identified through research, policy development and political debate as significant in the lives of disabled people. The book provides: an overview of key policy and legislative developments in the UK in relation to disabled children and adults in the post war period; an outline of the European Convention on Human Rights, the 1998 Human Rights Act and related procedures; an account of the ways in which disabled people's human rights have increasingly become a matter of concern and the implications of the Human Rights Act in relation to specific issues; a debate about the ways in which public bodies and practitioners within them can engage positively with the provisions of the Human Rights Act to develop better practice. "Disabled people and European human rights " should be of interest to both disabled people themselves and organisations representing their interests, professionals whose work brings them into contact with disabled people, and students of social work, social care, disability studies and law.