The COFACE Disability Platform for the rights of persons with disabilities and their families has carried out a review of EU policies in the fields of employment and work-life balance, to assess whether they provide for targeted measures in support to working parents with disabilities. It was published on 3rd December 2025. See the full review here. We had the pleasure of discussing the results of the review with Kamil Goungor, Policy and Movement Support Officer at the European Network for Independent Living.
Elizabeth Gosme, Director of COFACE Families Europe, reflected on the results of the EU policy review. Here are some of the points she made.
- Parents with a disability are often missing from policy discussions because disability policy is frequently framed around individuals being a recipient of care, and not as someone who is also a caregiver, a worker, and a parent. We wanted to correct that blind spot, and were inspired to do this follow discussions with the European Commission on the Disability Employment Package, which does not cover work-life balance measures. We were also inspired by our SHIFT guide for meaningful inclusion of persons with disabilities, which has a strong Family dimension, and is a useful too to rethink disability policy using a societal lens.
- The results of the review indicate that, to date, greater attention has been paid to the needs of working parents with disabilities in social policies focusing on work-life balance, employment and child poverty, than in disability policies and legislation per se. This points to the strong mainstreaming of disability rights in different policy fields (for instance with explicit references to parents with disabilities in the EU work-life balance directive and the European Child Guarantee), but also highlights the need to strengthen the gender and family dimensions of disability policy at EU level.
- The EU legal/policy framework has real strengths. There is a solid foundation around equality, non-discrimination, and inclusion, and disability is increasingly recognised in EU policymaking across the board. But when we look specifically at disabled parents, the framework is still uneven. Council Directive 2000/78/EC of 27 November 2000 establishing a general framework for equal treatment in employment and occupation (referred to as “Employment Equality Directive”), is an EU law which addresses disability within the workplace, however it does not specifically provide measures related to parenting or work-life balance of parents with disabilities.
- The family dimension of the EU strategy for the rights of persons with disabilities is weak, and parents with disabilities are not highlighted as a specific target group.
That means their needs can disappear in implementation: for example, childcare reforms that do not address accessibility, anti-poverty measures that do not recognise disability-related costs. However, the European Child Guarantee does highlight parents with disabilities as a target group, when referring to children in disadvantaged situations, as children in such families can be vulnerable if their parents do not get the right support. - She discussed the role of employers and actions they can take to support the work-life balance of parents with disabilities such as: normalising flexible work (where feasible) without penalising progression, such as remote work, reduced hours; treating reasonable accommodation as routine, timely, and collaborative.
- The review points to the need to strengthen the family dimension of EU disability policies, explicitly recognising disabled parents in strategies and guidance, and stronger implementation and enforcement of accommodation and anti-discrimination obligations.
See the full interview below by clicking on the video.
