Dads care too! Participation in paid employment and experiences of workplace flexibility for Australian fathers caring for children and young adults with disabilities

This study uses Australian survey data to explore whether caring for children and young people with disabilities affects paid employment participation of fathers who identify as the secondary caregiver. More fathers in the study were in full-time employment than those in the general Australian population, but they worked fewer hours, often in jobs they did not enjoy or roles with less responsibility. Over one third of fathers reported that caring had impacted on their job opportunities or career progression, particularly those whose children had more severe disabilities. The financial costs of raising a child with disabilities and their caring obligations informed many of the decisions fathers made in relation to employment. Fixed hours of work, lack of understanding from their employer, an income tied to hours worked and staff resources were cited as reasons why almost half of the fathers felt they were unable to access flexible working conditions to assist with their child’s care. Self-employment was seen by many fathers as desirable, but the perceived increase in flexibility may be accompanied by an increase in work hours. Implications for paternal well-being are discussed, along with the lifelong implications of caring on employment and financial security for families in the Australian context.     

Feeling well while chronically ill or impaired: a multilevel study on the moderating role of employment and volunteering in Europe

People with a chronic condition tend to report poorer subjective well-being than people without. This article examines the dependence of the relationship on doing paid and voluntary work, and on macro-level labour market exclusion of people with and without chronic conditions. Data from the European Quality of Life Survey (2011–2012) of people aged between 25 and 65 are analysed using multilevel regression techniques. A chronic condition has a stronger negative effect on subjective well-being for persons who are economically inactive or who never engage in voluntary work. The importance of paid work, however, varies with national levels of labour exclusion.     

Policy,citizenship and governance: the case of disability and employment policy in Australia

Current discussions regarding the relationship between welfare governance systems and employment promotion in disability policy appeal to a rejuvenated neo-liberal and paternalistic understanding of welfare governance. At the core of this rationality is the argument that people with disabilities not only have rights, but also duties, in relation to the State. In the Australia welfare system, policy tools are deployed to produce a form of self-discipline, whereby the State emphasises personal responsibility via assessment tools, ‘mutual obligation’ policy, and motivational strategies. Drawing on a two-year semi-longitudinal study with 80 people with a disability accessing welfare benefits, we examine how welfare governance subject recipients to strategies to produce productive citizens who are able to contribute to the national goal of maintaining competitiveness in the global economy. Participants’ interviews reveal the intended and unintended effects of this activation policy, including some acceptance of the logic of welfare-to-work and counter-hegemonic resistance to de-valued social identities.     

When they call me cripple: a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy attending a special needs school talk about being disabled

Central to the experience of disability are social and political forces and discourses which position people in particular ways. Little is known about the experiences of individuals with disabilities living in low-income and middle-income countries. We investigate the lived experience of a group of South African adolescents with cerebral palsy. In-depth interviews were conducted with 15 adolescents with cerebral palsy. Data were analysed using interpretive phenomenological analysis. The participants position themselves between the medical and social models of disability, in a liminal space between ‘normal’ and ‘disabled’, but do not identify with either group. They describe a ‘hierarchy of disability’ and position themselves in-between more serious sensory impairments and less serious emotional and learning disabilities. Being disabled is associated with being taken care of, infantilised and being powerless. Consequently they aspire to achieve independence and autonomy, and face danger, which are seen as signifiers that they are not disabled.     

Physical activity in the life of a woman with cerebral palsy: physiotherapy,social exclusion,competence, and intimacy

Although physical activity can have substantial mental and physical health benefits, people with cerebral palsy usually lead sedentary lives. To understand, at an individual level, this inactivity, we interviewed a 29-year-old minimally active woman with cerebral palsy (Alana) about the meanings and experiences of physical activity throughout her life. Using a case-study approach, we found that Alana had adverse childhood experiences with physical activity, including: having to perform difficult, and sometimes painful, physiotherapy; wearing callipers to assist her walking; demonstrating limited competence at physical activity; being excluded from physical education and other organised physical activity at school; and feeling socially isolated from her classmates. These experiences seemed to contribute to feelings of difference/inferiority and the subsequent avoidance of physical activity, which, in turn, might have contributed to premature functional decline. Physical activity levels in people with cerebral palsy might be increased through focusing on enhancing childhood experiences.     

Social inclusion through employment: the marketisation of employment support for people with learning disabilities in the United Kingdom

Employment for people with learning difficulties is considered key to their social inclusion. This contradicts the perceived un-employability of people with learning difficulties that has been part of their social identities throughout their history hitherto. The national rate of employment for people with learning difficulties remains extremely low and has barely changed in the 20?years between 1990 and 2010. This paper investigates links between learning disabilities and employment, drawing on interview-based research. It analyses the quality of experience of the minority in employment to consider whether employment can serve the inclusive purpose expected of it.     

Employment location choices: Factors associated with the likelihood of homebased employment

The purpose of this research analysis is to investigate the factors that are associated with the likelihood of a worker choosing homebased employment. Using a sample of 6,744 employed men and women from the 1984 Panel Study of Income Dynamics, a logit estimation procedure is employed. Factors which decrease the likelihood of being a homebased worker include minority status, higher levels of total family labor income, a high school education or less, and longer working hours. Older workers, workers without children, workers with young children under age six, the self-employed, and farmers are all more likely to be involved in homebased employment.Ramona K.Z. Heck is an Associate Professor in the Department of Consumer Economics and Housing, 133 Martha Van Rensselaer Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y. 14853. Her current research interests include: household asset and debt formation, working families and employers' benefits, and homebased employment. She received her Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1978.The analyses in this paper are related to work in progress under the Cooperative Regional Research Project, NE-167 entitled, At-Home-Income-Generation: Impact on Management, Productivity and Stability in Rural/Urban Families, partially supported by the stations of Hawaii, Iowa, Lincoln University (Missouri), Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Utah, Vermont, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.     

The potential of a couples approach to employment assistance: results of a nonexperimental evaluation

We present findings from a nonexperimental evaluation of an employment program in which both partners in young, low-income, primarily African-American couples simultaneously participated. Mothers participating in the couples program had larger immediate gains in employment and earnings and decreases in TANF receipt following their exit from the program relative to mothers who received employment assistance as individuals. Fathers showed similar although weaker results. These immediate benefits appeared to be driven by higher rates of program completion among couples’ participants. Couples in which both partners completed the program experienced the largest quarterly earnings gains, and couples with greater earnings’ gains were more likely to still be together one year after the program ended. Mothers’ earnings gains eroded in the two years following program completion and many reported new pregnancies and problems with child care. We suggest directions for future programs and encourage future studies to consider the range of mechanisms associated with a couples focus, including potential motivational benefits and unintended consequences.

Interpretative accounts of work capacity assessment policy for young adults with disabilities

Young adults with disabilities are a specific target of the welfare-to-work policy introduced by many OECD countries over the past decade. The implementation of these policies is a significant concern for service delivery organisations and advocates in Australia and internationally due to complex intersecting structural barriers that persist for many young adults with disabilities. A particular focus of this article is work capacity assessments. Drawing on socio-political theories and interpretive policy analysis, the 22 in-depth interviews with personnel from service delivery organisations and advocacy organisations reveal how the deemed capacity to work process is not only interpreted as flawed, but the current policy approach disables young adults, perpetuates stigma, and creates division between service users and service providers. The accounts reinforce the need to contest such assessments and instead turn towards a rights-based capability approach permitting young adults with disability self-determination over their education-to-employment pathway.     

Fatness as a disability: questions of personal and group identity

Both fat people and disabled people share common barriers to full societal participation and acceptance. While there has been a substantial amount of literature relating to these two groups as separate entities, there is a lack of contemporary research that investigates the relationship between fat and disability identity formation. The purpose of this qualitative study was to engage in a dialogue with fat individuals and explore the construction of their identities – whether or not they identified with having a disability and, if so, whether or not they viewed their fatness as a disability. Interviews with a sample size of seven participants who self‐identified as ‘fat’ revealed an unwillingness to adopt a disability identity based on their fatness.     

The experience of open access youth work: the voice of young people

This research explores young people’s experiences of open access youth work and identifies what they consider to be its value. The detailed analysis of the data, achieved through focus groups, revealed that ‘association’ was a key driver of engagement. It also highlighted the support system the youth club creates amongst the peers. The young people also valued the relationships they form with youth workers and acknowledge the support and guidance offered to them which better enables them to reflect on and navigate their complex lives. Young people also valued the acceptance they feel from the community developed in the youth space. It provided comfort and reassurance when at times they do not feel like they fit in anywhere else. This research offers a significant counter to the tide of current targeted youth work policy which is resulting in the demise of a provision which, judged by the findings from this research, appears to be highly valued by, and beneficial to, young people.     

Going beyond vocational rehabilitation as a training of skills: return-to-work as an identity issue

In western welfare states, labour participation is increasingly considered a vital aspect of taking part in society. Vocational rehabilitation programmes are intended to support people in the process of returning to work. These programmes pay much attention to the skills that clients need to develop in order to return to work. We argue, however, that vocational rehabilitation is more than the acquirement of skills, and that further attention should be paid to clients’ ‘identity work’ processes. Based on 45 life-stories, we present an analysis of the identity work expressed by people with a work disability in the Netherlands. We describe ‘separative’, ‘integrative’, and ‘pending’ processes of identity work. The presented typology can help vocational rehabilitation professionals become more sensitive to clients’ processes, and supports more inclusive vocational rehabilitation.     

A grounded theory of living a life with a physical disability in Taiwan

This study explores the experiences of disability for a number of Taiwanese adults with a physical disability. Using a grounded theory approach, their experiences of living a life with a physical disability were gained through in-depth interviews. The resulting grounded theory ‘it is more than just the impaired body’ presents the dynamic interactions between the participants and the context in which they were living their lives and how they managed their lives within that context. With its inclusion of the cultural dimension, a holistic way of understanding the daily lives of those who experience physical disability in Taiwan is provided.     

Seven Rules to Live by: Accommodations in Social Work Education and the Field

Students with disabilities are a growing population in higher education (National Center for Education Statistics, 2009 National Center for Education Statistics . ( 2009 ). Number and percentage distribution of students enrolled in post-secondary institutions, by level, disability status, and selected student characteristics: 2003–04 and 2007–08 . Retrieved from http://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d09/tables/dt09_231.asp  [Google Scholar]). Providing accommodations for students with disabilities can raise ethical and social justice questions and pose challenges for social work faculty, administrators, and field instructors. Social work educators must balance the legal mandates for nondiscrimination and reasonable accommodation against ethical obligations around protection of clients and preparation for practice. This article presents case examples in the context of legal analysis to help social work educators make difficult decisions about student academic performance.     

Three Days to Walk: a personal story of life writing and disability consciousness in China

Through a close reading of Three Days to Walk, a memoir of disability by Chinese writer Zhang Yuncheng, this paper develops a new understanding of self-narrated life writing and its intersection with disability consciousness in the contemporary Chinese context. It examines the changing nature of disability life writing since the end of the early 1980s, a time when the images and voices of disabled began to emerge from effective cultural invisibility and silence. In a move away from state-sponsored ‘triumph over tragedy’ biographical narratives typical of the immediate post-Cultural Revolution period, Three Days to Walk is characteristic of a new popular trend to publish self-narrated life stories that reveal unique and intimate histories of disability experience both imbued with and propelled by a burgeoning sense of disability consciousness in the Chinese context.     

Privileging work not sex: flexibility and employment in the sexual services industry

We present findings from a study of sex workers recruited in indoor licensed premises in Victoria. While the study addressed regulation, enforcement and working conditions, we focus on the value of flexible well‐paid work for two particular groups of female workers (parents and students). We link this issue of flexibility to broader gendered employment conditions in Australia, arguing the lack of comparable employment is crucial to understanding worker decisions about sex work. Debates and regulation focus on gendered inequalities related to heterosexuality much more than they recognize gendered inequalities related to labour market conditions. The focus on criminalization, harm, exploitation and stigma obscures the centrality of work flexibility and conditions to women's decision‐making. A more direct focus on the broader employment context may produce better recognition of why women do sex work.     

Barriers to employment as experienced by disabled people: a qualitative analysis in Calgary and Regina,Canada

Public policies stress greater inclusion of disabled people in the labour market and suggest ways to implement accommodative measures to these ends. Often missing from this literature is the experiences of disabled people in labour markets. This article reports results from a qualitative study conducted in 2005 and 2006 consisting of one‐to‐one and focus group interviews with 56 disabled individuals participating in employment training programmes in Calgary and Regina, Canada. Findings suggest the presence of workplace and employer discrimination and labelling as primary factors impeding respondents’ success in securing and maintaining employment in the labour market. The 56 respondents provide strong evidence that perceptions of disability have a greater impact on their inability to maintain and secure employment than does the lack of accommodative practices and measures in the workplace.     

Noah: a story of peacebuilding,nonviolence, reconciliation,and healing

ABSTRACT

For years there has been a failure to show the relevance between the application of religious text within social work and the social sciences. This paper provides a functional framework on the reason for the separation between social sciences and religious studies and then uses the Genesis account of Noah and the flood to show how the two can be integrated for peacebuilding, reconciliation, and healing. The paper applies the Noah story to micro, mezzo, and macro applications of social work practice and concludes with a call for a deeper integration of religious text into social work practice.     

Disability and employment policy in the Israeli welfare state: between exclusion and inclusion

Based on the social model(s) of disability, this article seeks to analyse the historical development of Israeli employment policy toward disabled people during the first decade and a half of its existence (1948–1965). Findings from primary and secondary sources suggest that throughout this period disabled people, mainly immigrants, found themselves at the lowest echelons of Israeli society and the labour market. Furthermore, the Israeli welfare state offers an interesting case study of the gap between a welfare state’s stated adherence to social justice and the more limited, and even contradictory, outcomes of its policies. Our discussion suggests that a valuable way of reframing our findings can be found in the critique of de-commodification as an inadequate concept and in the use of related concepts such as re-commodification and quasi-commodification.     

The challenges of a hidden disability: Social work practice in the field of traumatic brain injury

Abstract

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) has become an important area for social work practice. Children and adults sustaining TBI often undergo hospitalisation, rehabilitation and face the prospect of lifelong cognitive and psychosocial impairments. Families are profoundly affected by the consequences of the injury. TBI is a ‘hidden disability’ because there are typically no physical markers indicating a person has brain damage. This paper aims to provide some guidelines for social work practice in the area, in particular, outlining options for social work interventions at individual, family, community, service system and policy levels. Social workers need to acquire specialised knowledge about brain injury, reformulate traditional models of grief counselling to address the adjustment challenges and utilise community education and service innovation to address the social stigma and reduced level of community participation associated with brain damage. Finally, social workers aim to nurture a sense of hope in the face of the tragedy.