Complementing or conflicting human rights conventions? Realising an inclusive approach to families with a young person with a disability and challenging behaviour

United Nation's conventions exist to help facilitate and protect vulnerable people's human rights: including people with disabilities (Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, 2006) and children (Convention on the Rights of the Child, 1989). However, for some families where a family member has a disability, there may be inherent conflicts in meeting stand-alone human rights conventions. These conventions should work together to ensure that young people with disabilities and challenging behaviour and their parents and siblings all have equal rights to full participation in social, economic and civic life. Yet service system deficits mean that this is not always the case. This paper argues that governments need to provide a whole of family and community support approach to ensure the human rights of all family members are met. This is a transnational complex ethical, moral and human rights issue that needs to be debated and addressed. © 2011 Taylor & Francis