Adjustment to disability

This article will focus on the biopsychosocial challenges encountered when an individual is disabled at an early age as well as when an individual acquires a disability later in life. Two case examples will focus on the adaptations/life choices that are necessary to adequately meet psycho/social/developmental needs and enhance individual self esteem. The case of Rita, a woman who lost her hearing at age two, highlights the importance of integrating a biopsychosocial approach to understand the multiple challenges and adaptations of individuals who are disabled at an early age. Laureen, a woman who acquired a spinal cord injury during her late teen years, described her struggles as a young adult adapting to a physical disability. Both cases highlight the importance of integrating an ecological/systems framework focusing on a biopsychosocial perspective, emphasizing the interrelationship between biological, psychological, social, technological, cultural and political factors.     

Helen Keller: rethinking the problematic icon

More than 30 years after her death, Helen Keller is still known internationally as the little deaf blind girl, the 'miracle child' who triumphed over adversity. However, behind the image, hidden from the public gaze, was a flesh-and-blood woman, writer and radical activist, suffragette and Socialist. She was a woman who lived to old age, yet is fixed in the public imagination as an eternal child. This paper charts the creation of Keller's popular image and enduring iconic status, analysing their purpose and the implications they hold for us as disabled people. It then examines the truth of her life, revealing how contemporary are the issues which determined it. Finally, it explores the value of retelling her biography and the relevance it holds in the building of disability culture.     

Dementia at the Intersections: A unique case study exploring social location

Research exploring the experiences of persons living with dementia has been criticized for failing to situate individual experience in a broader socio-cultural context. In particular, little attention has been devoted to examining how social location shapes the subjective experiences and responses of persons with dementia. This paper examines how one woman's position as a younger, aboriginal woman of lower socio-economic status living with a same-sex partner, helped construct her experiences with dementia. Data for this unique case study are based on in-depth personal and family interviews and video-taped participant observation. Three themes dominated her story. First, receiving a diagnosis of dementia triggered this woman's desire to connect with her cultural heritage. Through this claiming of her cultural identity as an aboriginal woman, the dementia was reinterpreted as facilitating a closer connection with her ancestors and this released for her a sense of creativity, productivity and peacefulness. Second, the refusal of this woman to adopt a more conventional interpretation of dementia, compounded by her younger age and atypical presentation, resulted in a tendency by others to discount the impact of the dementia in her life. Finally, the lack of recognition afforded to her female partner increased her partner's isolation and created challenges for their relationship. This paper will focus on embedding this woman's lived experience within a broader socio-cultural context in order to demonstrate how aspects of one's identity and social location interact to construct one's subjective experience.     

Disability and Disaster Recovery

Abstract

This paper examines the connections between disability and disaster from a global perspective. Concepts from the research and policy literature are used to distinguish between individual and social models of disability, and between natural hazards and human disasters. These concepts are then employed to investigate data on the response to disabled people's recovery needs in two recent case studies: the Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina. The analysis combines primary, secondary and tertiary sources to explore disability issues in the reconstruction of inclusive communities and the lessons that may be learned about disaster preparedness in poor communities. The conclusions suggest that more attention should be paid to social model approaches, particularly in understanding global links with poverty, and that disabled people's organisations should be resourced as agents of disaster recovery and preparedness.     

Spirituality and Ethics in Long-Term Care

Abstract

The issues of spirituality and ethics are evoked in a case of an 89-year-old woman resident in a nursing home who refused nutrition and hydration. Clergy representing Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, Hinduism and Islam were asked to respond to questions regarding the choice to end life and spiritual resources to help the patient. The clergy agreed that the patient is in a spiritual crisis but her autonomy should be respected, and spiritual resources should be expended to enhance meaning. The ethical dilemma for the social worker, as for the clergy, is whether to support the patient's freedom to end her life or persuade her to continue to live. The dilemma is based on conflicting social work values of self-determination and the preservation of life. Three ethical principles are in conflict: respect for autonomy, the duty to prevent harm, and beneficence. At the end of the process of ethical deliberation, the social worker must be prepared to accept the patient's decision.     

Does She Boil Eggs? Towards a Feminist Model of Disability

The Social Model of Disability is increasingly recognised as the theoretical and ideological underpinning for the collectivisation and politicisation of disabled people. This paper examines the Social Model from the perspective of disabled women. It then considers the position of disabled women in relation to both the women's movement and the disability movement. It argues that the former is oriented towards non-disabled women and the latter towards disabled men, with a consequent further marginalisation and disempowering of disabled women. Drawing on the history of black feminism, the author (who is a white non-disabled woman, and who teaches anti-discriminatory social work practice based on an integrated theoretical model) concludes by offering to disabled women a reframing of the analysis in which to explore their simultaneous experiencing of their gender and disability.     

One Woman's Life Journey

Abstract

This qualitative study examines the life history of an 80 year old woman grassroots peace activist through the lens of spirituality (Borysenko, 1996; Canda & Furman, 1999) and relational theory (Belenky, Clinch, Goldberger, Tarule, 1986; Covington & Surrey, 1997). Using a case study design and multiple data sources, the major psychological, social, and historical events of her life were reviewed. Major theoretical themes that emerged from the interview are described. These findings provide useful insights about how the quest for inner peace and spirituality motivates and sustains community activism, an area critical to social workers who use peaceful diplomacy to organize efforts for social justice outcomes.     

Images of Disability in 19th Century British Children's Literature

The authors report on their investigation of some types of nineteenth century British children's periodical literature as a source of information regarding the social perception of disability of that time. A survey of the material in the Osborne Collection of early children's literature in the Toronto Public library suggests that the prevailing conception of disability of the time was of a fixed, divinely ordained state of being, viewed as having a global influence on the life of the disabled person. The disabled person was regarded as set apart from the rest of society by his or her disability.     

Activism and the academy: losing the ideological and material battles

Abstract

In this article written in the summer of 2018 Professor Michael Oliver sought to convey a sense of urgency about the need to reinvigorate the relationship between disability, the academy and activism. In his usual clear unswerving style that is both liberating and enabling in its directness he calls upon all engaged with the journal to remember that the foundations of disability studies emerged out of democratic organisations of disabled people and must remain committed to placing the experiences of disabled people at the centre of academic and activist enterprise. He places emphasis on the original purpose of the journal to build on the social model of disability in order to produce real social change expressing frustration about what he saw as an increasing ineffectualness within the academic community to confront what is really happening to disabled people. He is forthright when describing his hope that disability activists and academics will strengthen the future of disabled people, and the future of disability studies too, by working ever more closely together.     

Another Way of Looking

This article presents a discussion that emerged in response to a dilemma faced by an experienced social work lecturer in planning an introductory life course lecture about people labelled as having learning disabilities. The dilemma related to whether or not to begin with a quote from a parent reflecting on her own feelings shortly after her twin children, aged six months, had been identified as having a congenital impairment. The statement, reproduced below, was made 13 years later, and involved a recollection of how the mother had felt when seeing a display of skipping ropes in a department store. A discussion ensued concerning how ways of thinking about impairment can be informed by the affirmative model of disability, a recent theoretical development within disability studies. The article takes the form of a dialogic exchange where the affirmative model is presented and examined as an alternative to the way disability has traditionally been understood in social work education. The aim is to illustrate the application of the affirmative model and to provide disabled people/social workers/families with a theoretical tool with which to look differently at impairment and disability and to challenge some traditional assumptions and practices.     

Do disabled people need a stronger social model: a social model of human rights?

Abstract

We introduce the social model of disability by reflecting on its origins and legacy, with particular reference to the work of the Union of the Physically Impaired against Segregation. We argue that there has been a gradual rolling back of the rights and entitlements associated with the social model of disability. Yet no alternative for the social model has been proposed in response to such threats to disabled people’s human rights. Disabled people need a stronger social model that acts as a means to a society which enables and ensures their rights; the right to live a dignified life, as well as to live in an environment that enables people to flourish with disability.     

Children with disabilities in Swedish child welfare – a differentiating and disabling practice

ABSTRACT

Research shows that children with disabilities are victims of violence and abuse to a higher extent than other children and thus need support from social services. In Sweden, cooperation between two different social services units is required to support children with disabilities in socially vulnerable families. In this study, we have examined the intersection between children and disability in a Swedish social services context from the perspective of childhood studies and disability studies. The reasoning of the two units including the child perspective emerged during focus group interviews based on two vignettes. The results show two different rationalities, which has consequences for the disabled child. In spite of a social policy where the ‘best interests of the child’ are meant to prevail and disabilities are meant to be interpreted as barriers in society, children with disabilities seem to be reduced to individuals who are lacking in ability and competency and who are profoundly victimised by power structures that favour the adult perspective in social services.     

The Story of Carrie and Anne

Abstract

When a woman in a forty-two year old lesbian relationship becomes disabled, her partner becomes her primary caretaker. However, when the caretaker becomes ill, distant family members take over decision-making responsibilities and without regard to their wishes, separate the women in two different nursing homes. A lesbian social worker realizes the nature of the relationship and advocates with the respective families to have the two women placed together shortly before one partner dies.     

Differences,Conflations and Foundations: The limits to 'accurate' theoretical representation of disabled people's experience?

This article proposes that current approaches to theorising disability as a form of social oppression and their relationship to disabled people's experiences are hampered by a modernist conceptual framework, which is increasingly at odds with the contemporary social world and with developments in theory-making as a whole. In order to bring disability theory closer to the lives of disabled people and the politics of new social movements, it is argued that the conceptual underpinnings of theory must be broadened beyond their current focus on structures, which view differences in terms of delimiting boundaries to one which includes an awareness of the relational, mediatory and performative role of discourse, and the increasing importance of local knowledges in shaping the social and political world.     

Crip theory and the disabled identity: why disability politics needs impairment

This article highlights the importance of recognizing both the ontology of impairment as it relates to the creation of the disabled identity as well as why articulations of the disabled identity being ‘crip’ obfuscate potential politics. Examining how the disabled identity has been cast as a coherent social and political category, rather than the messy and complicated identity it truly is, I argue the adoption of a post-structuralist orientation by activists and advocates is bad for disability politics. Providing two examples, the first focusing on a publicized rape case of a person with an intellectual disability and the second on the importance of disability rights claims based on visibility of impairment, I show how articulations like those made in crip theory can have serious, negative implications for the lived experience of people with disabilities. I conclude with a call for disability studies scholars to engage disability politics in their work.     

‘Access and achievement or social exclusion?’ are the government's policies working for disabled children and their families?

The past decade has seen significant developments in policy and practice for disabled children and their families. In particular there is a new focus upon access and inclusion, with increasing awareness of the need to see disabled children and families as active partners within policy development and implementation. There is growing awareness of the implications of disability discrimination legislation across children's services and of the importance of improving arrangements for early identification and intervention to maximise disabled children's participation within mainstream services. The National Service Framework, the advent of Children's Trusts and a new Special Education Needs (SEN) Action Programme, together with the introduction of direct payments, give encouraging messages about multi‐agency working and a strategic and ‘joined up’ approach to childhood disability. However, many disabled children and their families continue to experience discrimination, poverty and social exclusion. The challenge for the Government is to ensure that disabled children are ‘mainstreamed’ across all policy initiatives and to recognise the talents and ambitions of disabled children and their families in service design and implementation. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The myth of transition: contractualizing disability in the sheltered workshop

This paper investigates notions of transition and independence, as well as the current circumstances that detain countless disabled people in employment endeavors that not only pay meager wages but also cement a lifelong servitude to the workshop. Sheltered workshops exist on the basis and replication of a structure that incarcerates disabled people within vocational-like settings. This paper begins a discussion of the social contract that occurs between the disabled person in the workshop. The workshop is no longer a place of societal liberation that affords the individual the opportunity to learn vocational skills, but rather it has become an institution that creates its own army of workers that will forever be subjected to a life in the workshop because of their disability status.     

‘I nearly lost my work’: chance encounters,legal empowerment and the struggle for disability rights in Ghana

This article uses a case study from Ghana to argue that rights-based legal instruments are important but insufficient steps towards securing disability rights in non-western societies. Despite Ghana’s implementation of a Disability Act and ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, a grassroots perspective shows that legislation and the model of legal empowerment will not automatically produce equal access to human rights. The paper will present this argument through a case study of an individual who became disabled in 2008 and struggled for four years to secure his rights to healthcare and employment. I also argue that the case has a wider significance for disability rights in Ghana and beyond.     

Towards an Affirmation Model of Disability

In this paper we argue that a new model of disability is emerging within the literature by disabled people and within disability culture, expressed most clearly by the Disability Arts Movement. For the purposes of discussion we call it the affirmative model. It is essentially a non-tragic view of disability and impairment which encompasses positive social identities, both individual and collective, for disabled people grounded in the benefits of lifestyle and life experience of being impaired and disabled. This view has arisen in direct opposition to the dominant personal tragedy model of disability and impairment, and builds on the liberatory imperative of the social model. Critiques of the latter have been consistently expressed as, or interpreted as, re-affirmations of personal tragedy, particularly in relation to impairment. In this analysis the affirmation model addresses the limitations of the social model through the realisation of positive identity encompassing impairment, as well as disability.     

Disabled Women Sexually Abused in Childhood: Treatment Considerations

There is a dearth of literature addressing the issues presented in the treatment of adult disabled women who were victims of childhood sexual abuse. This article focuses on the pertinent issues involved in clinically treating this population, such as the meaning of the traumatic event of sexual abuse for the individual, the disability and how it may have impacted her in terms of dependence, body integrity, and sexuality. Coping strategies and case examples are presented and possible countertransferential reactions are examined.