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Polls apart: a brief guide to accessible democracy
- Authors:
- MORRIS Gwilym, SCOTT Ruth
- Publisher:
- SCOPE
- Publication year:
- 2003
- Pagination:
- 12p.
- Place of publication:
- London
This report calls for disabled people to have equal access to the voting process and demands that disabled people are able to vote independently and in secret. Disabled people have an absolute democratic right and being unable to vote as equals makes them second-class citizens. There are 10 million disabled adults in the UK, yet at the last General Election, in 2001, 69 per cent of polling stations failed a basic access test and were inaccessible to some disabled people.
Towards a social model approach to counselling disabled clients
- Authors:
- SWAIN John, GRIFFITHS Carol, HEYMAN Bob
- Journal article citation:
- British Journal of Guidance and Counselling, 31(1), February 2003, pp.137-152.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
The social model of disability has emerged over the past 30 years in Britain to challenge the dominant individual, particularly medical and tragedy, models. This social model is borne from the experiences of disabled people and essentially defines disability as the discrimination faced by people with impairments. This paper explores the possible conflicts between some counselling approaches that can individualise and personalise problems and disability as a political issue. Drawing on research with counsellors and disabled clients, we illustrate the social construction of disability as an individualised problem within the counselling process. Considering the implications for counselling practice, we argue for an approach to counselling which recognises the social model of disability as the basis for social change.
Health and employment: towards a New Deal
- Authors:
- EASTERLOW Donna, SMITH Susan J.
- Journal article citation:
- Policy and Politics, 31(4), October 2003, pp.511-533.
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
This article draws on lay perspectives to question some assumptions underpinning the government's New Deal for people with long-term illness or disability in Britain. Tracing out the interaction between health and employment trajectories, interviewees challenge the idea that over-generous benefits pave the route to non-employment. They also question the emphasis on matching skills to jobs as a pathway back to work. People experiencing ill-health do not lack the incentive to work and they are likely to be forced, rather than lured, into pensions and onto benefits. The New Deal aims to enhance labour supply, but the problems people experience are more about the organisation of work and the limited demand for their skills.
The paradox of disability culture: the need to combine versus the imperative to let go
- Author:
- GAVIN Rose
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(5), August 2003, pp.675-690.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article seeks to demonstrate that, to function as a truly emancipatory phenomenon, disability culture must be relieved of the paradox that keeps it trapped in modernist assumptions that serve to reinforce its marginalised status. The paradox of disability culture may be stated as follows. How can disabled people claim unity without falling into the same exclusionary practices that have served to create their divisive identifications in the first place? Conversely, how can they relinquish the practices of identification that are based on binary oppositions without losing the ability to claim identities at all? The author argues that, by extricating it from its origins in essentialist assumptions, disability culture can be reinvigorated as a truly emancipatory device, which is capable of devising positive identities which, rather than celebrating the 'disabled identity', rely on its dissolution.
The legal road to rights?: disabling premises, obiter dicta and the Disability Discrimination Act 1995
- Author:
- ROULSTONE Alan
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(2), March 2003, pp.117-131.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This article offers a critical exploration of the current limits of the law in establishing and maintaining the rights of disabled people. By offering a critical jurisprudence perspective and applying this to the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the article highlights the way in which pre-existing social dynamics underpin the manufacture and application of law. Despite the growth of social constructionist, realist, critical and post-modern views of laws, the continued power of natural and positivist views of laws as a supra-social code helps explain the current limits to anti-discrimination law. It is argued that, as a socially created phenomenon, law can be radically reconstructed. However, unless a fundamental reappraisal of law is undertaken, the Disability Discrimination Act and related legislation is likely to remain severely constrained.
The government of disability: economics and power in welfare and work
- Author:
- JOLLY Debbie
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(4), June 2003, pp.509-522.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
The term government of disability refers to the ways that the lived experiences of people with accredited impairments are contextualised by economics and power in welfare and work. This paper explores how far a multiple perspective that develops a framework of the government of disability and the ontological ambiguity of impairment can take us towards contemporary understandings of disability, impairment and change in the UK. The term the ontological ambiguity of impairment describes the ways that understandings of impairment have become more ambiguous, contributing to greater insecurities and fragmentation because of key changes in the government of disability. However, the author argues that wider explanations of economic and power relationships are also necessary to develop a critical perspective of the contemporary government of disability, economics, and power in welfare and work.
Beyond the medical model: a reconsideration of 'feeblemindedness', citizenship, and eugenic restrictions
- Author:
- CAREY Allison C.
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(4), June 2003, pp.411-430.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
The rise of eugenic restrictions in early twentieth century America reshaped the relationship between intellectual disability, citizenship, and the exercise of rights. To explain the rise of rights restrictions, scholarship has largely turned to the medicalisation of 'feeblemindedness', while overlooking mainstream concepts within citizenship studies. By drawing upon an institutional and relational approach to citizenship, the author argues that factors including the dominant legal narratives and infrastructure, as well as the broader relational context can be used to enhance our understanding of the development of eugenic restrictions. More broadly, an institutional and relational approach to citizenship can provide a theoretical framework by which to meaningfully include people with intellectual disabilities within citizenship studies, while recognising their unique historical experiences.
Subversive political praxis: supporting choice, power and control for people with learning difficulties
- Author:
- THOMPSON S. A.
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(6), October 2003, pp.719-736.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This paper is drawn from research conducted with gay and bisexual men with learning difficulties, a project that included participants' various struggles to self-identify within these alternative sexualities. Significant parts of this identity work were mitigated by participation in what is referred to here as 'politically radical support groups'. Three facilitators of these groups, professionals in the areas of sex education, were interviewed and a common itinerary was uncovered, namely a subversive and political praxis. At its heart, such praxis argues that educational endeavours for people with learning difficulties must not only account for disabling practices, but more importantly, maximally prioritise the mitigation of such prejudice within educational activities. Furthermore, it is argued that political praxis is not merely theoretical; six practical strategies are offered. In these ways, caregivers are offered concrete approaches to (genuinely) support the choice, power and control for people with learning difficulties.
Parent-professional power relations: parent and professional perspectives
- Authors:
- SWAIN John, WALKER Caron
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(5), August 2003, pp.547-560.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
This paper reflects on a small-scale qualitative research study around the establishment of a conductive education centre in a city in the north of England. From the outset, the centre's existence presented a challenge to existing services because the monopoly control of existing professional practice and policy was under question. The research does not offer an evaluation of the effectiveness of conductive education. The task was to examine the centre's provision in relation to existing statutory services, and provide a forum for informed discussion relating to the provision and organisation of multi-professional services for disabled children. The paper suggests that, although there was a mutual tension between the centre and professionals, a number of pointers could become a starting point for a more equitable partnership between parents and existing service providers. The authors also argue, however, that such a notion of partnership is limited without the voices of disabled people.
Grass roots promotion of community health and human rights for people with disabilities in post-communist Central Europe: a profile of the Slovak Republic
- Author:
- HOLLAND Daniel
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(2), March 2003, pp.133-143.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
Individuals living with a disability or chronic illness in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe face significant challenges to quality of life. The government-supported health care infrastructures in the post-communist countries of Central and Eastern Europe remain highly centralised and institutional, which poses particular obstacles to people with disabilities who wish to live independently in their communities. A partial solution to this difficulty has been the development of innovative grass roots organisations that provide community-based support to individuals with disabilities or chronic illness. These disability organisations provide services and advocacy that allow individuals to receive needed support outside of the biomedical institutions, facilitating independent living in the community. They do so, however, in a political and economic environment of immense change, and one with varying degrees of support for non-governmental organisations and a Civil Society. The following article profiles this grass roots development in one particularly interesting post-communist Central European country, the Slovak Republic.