After nearly 30 years of experience worldwide, CBR is still struggling to gain recognition as a legitimate model of service-provision to disabled people. It claims that it is an effective, cost-efficient, sustainable model needing to be borne out by evidence. In this regard we have sought to present some considerations, and identify that there are different levels at which to explore different kinds of evidence. First, it was noted that there are promising possibilities for obtaining and incorporating evidence at the direct service-provision and CBR technique level. Second, it was identified that there are encouraging studies emerging for obtaining evidence at the CBR service-level by synthesizing evaluation reports and other related documents. Third, a suggestion was raised that the incorporation of values as well as research findings in establishing evidence at the model level may also be a clarifying distinction. Fourth, we suggested that in keeping with the underlying values in CBR, creative new methodologies for determining evidence should include participation at the community level, including the service-users themselves, their advocates in DPOs, and local community members. Appropriate research methods, drawn from the experience of the wider community development field, should be included alongside the earlier mentioned evidence strategies to enable the voice of village disabled people to be heard and incorporated into a unique, multifaceted evidence base for the discipline of CBR.

*Enablement

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E-mail: h.cornielje@enablement.nl