From ‘for’ to ‘of’: a typology of Maltese disability organisations

The main aim of this article is to adapt the Typology of Disability Organisations that Oliver devised, and subsequently developed further in 1990, to a different context, in this case the Maltese disability sector. The paper first traces the history of the disabled people’s movement and presents Oliver’s Typology, which makes a clear distinction between organisations for and of disabled persons. The article then highlights the main characteristics of the Maltese disability sector and develops the Typology of the organisations operating within that sector. It shows how it is non-disabled people that are mostly in control of disability organisations, and suggests ways in which there can be a stronger movement towards the development and strengthening of disabled people’s organisations. The article shows how Oliver’s Typology can be used flexibly and adapted to various contexts. It also shows how drawing up a Typology of Disability Organisations can shed light on the environment within which these organisations operate, identifying areas of strength and possible areas for growth.     

‘A mockery of equality’: an exploratory investigation into disabled activists’ views of the Paralympic Games

This article offers an exploratory analysis of the opinions of disabled activists towards the Paralympic Games. With the use of a qualitative online survey, the work focuses on the perceptions of disabled individuals (n = 32) who are not Paralympic athletes but are affiliated to the disability rights group, the United Kingdom Disabled People’s Council. Working on the premise that the views of disabled activists have been excluded from Paralympic sports discourse to date, the results illustrate a nuanced yet negative view of the Games to contrast with an existing, yet overly positive, academic narrative. Participants were particularly cynical of the portrayal and production of the Games and its Paralympic athletes as they perceived that the wider population of disabled people is misrepresented. The overwhelming perception in this preliminary analysis suggests that the Paralympic Games can be counterproductive to disability rights beyond sport.     

Representations of disability in print news media in postsocialist Ukraine

This article examines the narrative discourses that shape representations of disability in newspapers in postsocialist Ukraine, arguing that narratives about disability are linked to a meta-discourse of ‘transition’ that emphasizes disorder. Further, newspaper coverage prescribes competing and contradictory models of citizenship and personhood for postsocialist subjects living with disabilities. The article offers recommendations for improving press coverage of disability issues.     

Repositioning mothers: mothers,disabled children and disability studies

In this article we set out to review the ways in which mothers of disabled children have been portrayed within disability studies and the more broader academic literature. We argue that within disability studies mothers of disabled children occupy a liminal position because they are often not disabled and yet they can experience forms of disablism. Their experiences can differ markedly from the experiences of mothers of non‐disabled children and yet the consequences and outcomes of these experiences, such as developing a ‘special competence’ is largely overlooked. Mothers can work to effect change on behalf of their children and, in some cases, for disabled people more generally, however, this role of activist mother is largely undervalued. The review of literature presented here leads us to conclude that further research needs to be undertaken exploring and highlighting the ways in which mothers of disabled children negotiate, manage and approach their daily lives, operating within what are described by feminist scholars as oppressive mothering ideologies and disabling environments.     

The accomplishments of disabled women’s advocacy organizations and their future in Korea

Since the late 1990s disabled women’s advocacy organizations have fought against oppression and have made great strides in Korea. This paper aims to describe the accomplishments, challenges and future directions of disabled women’s advocacy organizations in Korea. A qualitative design was employed to explore disabled women’s perspectives. Participants were leaders in disabled women’s advocacy organizations and were recruited from each of the organizations existing in Korea in 2007. Among seven potential participants, five were interviewed. Accomplishments to date include significant gains in the recognition and visibility of disabled women, advances in the use of gender‐sensitive approaches to the development of disability policies and the growth of networks among disabled women’s organizations. Disabled women’s advocacy will continue to become stronger in the future through increased organizational membership, the development of a distinct organizational identity, the articulation of more focused policy concerns and continued network development.     

The making of Jamaica’s ‘National Policy for Persons with Disabilities 2000’: macro,meso and micro factors

This paper summarises the findings of my doctoral thesis on the development of Jamaica’s first rights‐based disability policy: The National Policy for Persons with Disabilities 2000. The research had two main aims. First through conducting a retrospective case study, was to construct a history of the national policy’s development, which was made possible by a series of events. Second, was to explore through using Easton’s thesis, that policy is developed within an extra‐ and intra‐ societal environment in order to investigate how macro, meso and micro factors have influenced the policy‐making process. The thesis synthesises Easton’s systems approach to policy‐making with Lasswell’s classic stagist approach as a tool for discussing the policy‐making process in Jamaica. I argue that a combination of macro, meso and micro factors created an ‘opportunity’ for the national policy’s development, which represents a paradigm shift in Jamaican disability policy.     

Presenting welfare reform: poverty porn,telling sad stories or achieving change?

Much is written about the suffering resulting from welfare reform and other cuts for disabled people and others on the receiving end. Usually this is seen as a ‘good thing’. But is it as simple as that? It may not be the same as so-called television poverty porn, but what is the point of constantly recycling welfare reform’s effects? Judging from last May’s general election, doing this does not seem to have had a significant effect on public politics/attitudes. So perhaps we need to look at it more carefully. When might discussion of welfare reform be helpful and when unhelpful? Is not the real task to develop alternatives, rather than hope as the Fabians did, that if we show how awful things are, ‘then something will have to be done’?     

Chinese disability independent living policy

Despite strong statements on disability rights in Chinese legislation since 1990, independent living policy as experienced by disabled people falls short of the social inclusion goals expected from such a policy commitment. Analysis of empirical research about disabled people's experiences shows that responsibility for independent living rests primarily with disabled people and their families. Only when they have no family does the government provide support, in the form of institutional care. Very little personal assistance or community-based housing is available. Minimum income support and the introduction of social services are slowly addressing the social exclusion of disabled people in China.     

The crisis of local authority funding and its implications for independent living for disabled people in the United Kingdom

The recent financial collapse of Northamptonshire County Council sets a worrying precedent for local authorities in the United Kingdom, and in particular for disabled people who depend on services provided by local authorities, such as Direct Payments for personal assistance, for their daily living needs. While the Northamptonshire situation has been blamed on financial incompetence, we argue that it has deeper roots in austerity policies implemented by Conservative-led governments since 2010 on a national level. We also argue that the placement of responsibility for funding personal assistance services in the hands of local authorities creates a deeply unjust ‘postcode lottery’ for disabled people, and we call for a national right to all services necessary for independent living, regardless of cost.     

Towards sustainable hybrid relationships in cash-for-care systems

Welfare state services are currently challenged by a key contemporary issue relating to citizens’ independence. But very little attention has been paid to how this affects the relationships between providers and receivers of welfare services. As the objective of cash-for-care systems is to enhance users’ independence by giving them the role of an employer in relation to their care workers, this article focuses on the implications of this system for user–care-worker relationships. Based on the findings of a qualitative cross-national study in Norway and the United Kingdom, the article suggests that the British system tends to foster one of two kinds of relationships – a master–servant type of relationship or a strong solidarity/emotionally-based relationship – while the Norwegian system rather tends to encourage a more professional type of relationship. In everyday practice, however, relationships can be mixed types or they can even resist the direction more usually taken within the particular cash-for-care system.     

New policies,old ideas: the question of disability assessment systems and social policy

This paper reports on qualitative content analysis research and critically analyzes the state’s intention to use the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as a tool to develop a national disability assessment system that will guide social policy developments, and particularly the allocation of pensions and benefits to disabled people. The work uses Cyprus as an example, and reviews the most important issues arising from a recent study prepared by the Department for Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities. The most important points stemming from the analysis are grouped and discussed in such a way as to shed light upon the most controversial aspects of the proposed assessment system, such as the definition of disabled people in national laws, and the implications of associating social policy with the assessment of disability and functioning. The discussion addresses issues that are of interest at international level.     

Inheritance,poverty, and disability

Inheritance is a significant means of transferring wealth from one generation to the next, and therefore increasingly attracts attention from researchers and policy-makers working on intergenerational and multidimensional poverty. However, until now disabled persons have been overlooked in these discussions. This oversight is particularly unfortunate because, as a group, the estimated one billion people with disabilities (some 15% of the world’s population) are among the poorest and most marginalized of the global population. Over the past decade, a small but growing literature has examined the recursive connections between poverty and disability throughout the developing world. In this paper, we argue that disabled individuals are routinely denied inheritance rights in many low-income and middle-income countries, and that this is a significant and largely unrecognized contributor to their indigence. The denial of inheritance is both a social justice issue and a practice that can no longer be overlooked if disabled persons are to be brought into the development mainstream.     

Towards an agenda for disability research in Europe: learning from disabled people’s organisations

This paper addresses the challenges of building capacity for collaborative participatory research with disabled people’s organisations in European countries. The paper presents initial findings from the project ‘European Research Agendas for Disability Equality’ (EuRADE), which seeks to build the capacity of civil society organisations to participate in future research collaborations in partnership with academic institutions. The findings draw on survey data identifying the research capacity, needs and priorities of 68 organisations in 25 countries and focuses, in particular, on responses from national or European level representative organisations of disabled people. The findings demonstrate a high degree of motivation and readiness for collaboration in academic research but raise concerns about the readiness of academic institutions to engage disabled people as equal partners within social model and rights‐based approaches. Respondent organisations identified a wide range of research needs that raise challenges for collaborative responses from the academic community. In this way, the findings provide a basis for developing user‐led agendas for European funded research within the emancipatory paradigm, and indentify important opportunities for new international research collaborations between activists and academics.     

Personalisation,social justice and social work: a reply to Simon Duffy

This paper begins by defining what is meant by adolescence and reviewing the literature which indicates concern for the high rates of suicidal behaviour in adolescence. Possible explanations as to why adolescents harm themselves are considered, as is the contagious aspect of some suicidal behaviours. Extracts from three interviews conducted with young women in residential care who have engaged in self-harming behaviours are then considered. Links are made between what they say and relevant theory. The paper goes on to discuss the impact of suicidal behaviour in residential care settings. It concludes that it is essential to create time and space to think carefully about this complex and multi-faceted difficulty both for the adolescents themselves and those in the caring professions charged with the responsibility of trying to help them.     

Two’s company,three’s a crowd: disabled people,their carers and their partners

In this analytical autoethnography, I share some of my complex relational experiences between my partner with a severe physical disability, his carers and myself. The article explores the benefits of care and carers, the physical and emotional costs of carers and some of the general considerations taken in this triad relationship. I share some of my relational experiences with an audience who might not normally encounter or have thought about the dynamic relationships between this triad. It is hoped that this will stimulate an interest to open dialogue, offer support and provide an insight into the lives of some relationships.     

Environmental hazard and disabled people: from vulnerable to expert to interconnected

Why are disabled people disproportionately affected by the impacts of environmental hazard, and is it really only their relative poverty that makes them so vulnerable? What might disabled people contribute from their experience of negotiating barriers to designing responses to the challenges of environmental hazard? Can the lived experience of inter-dependency, as opposed to individual independence, contribute to the radical rethinking of our relationships with the environment, other sentient beings and each other? Drawing on a short scoping study, this article reviews the multiple causes of disabled people’s vulnerability, and goes on to ask whether the experience disabled people enables them to become valued contributors, rather than just members of a vulnerable group. We also explore possible reasons for the lack of inclusion and diversity within the environmental movement, and suggest that the disability and environmental movements might make a more common cause.     

Radicalised civil society and protracted political actions in Kerala (India): a socio-political narrative

ABSTRACT

Kerala modernity and its widely acclaimed model of development, among other factors, is a result of radicalised civil society and protracted political action. The political actions of multiple actors such as social reform movements, communist movements, public theatre, people’s science movements, library and radical public policy played decisive role in this direction. In contrast to the two dominant conceptions of modernity – western capitalist modernity and eastern socialist modernity, which conceptualised that modernity is the result of industrialisation and centralised planning and development, respectively – modernity in Kerala was the result of political actions from below, which forced the state to adopt radical social and political reforms. These exceptionalities in Kerala modernity distinct itself from rest of the modernities in societies of the Global South.     

‘Nothing about us without us’: the emerging disability movement and advocacy in China

The disability movement and disabled persons’ self-help organizations (DPOs) are emerging in China, some of which succeeded in promoting policy and social changes with special strategies. Based on an original survey and interview, this article explains the development and survival strategies of China’s DPOs, and especially interprets some successful cases of social advocacy and policy advocacy in the emerging disability movement. It is hoped that scholars will pay more attention to the advocacy and public engagement of the disability community in non-western settings in the future.     

Parity of participation in liberal welfare states: human rights,neoliberalism, disability and employment

Governments continue to face challenges in implementing effective strategies to increase social and economic participation of people with disabilities. In a recent OECD high-level policy forum on Sickness, Disability and Work, the main policy message was the need for a culture of inclusion; with a dual focus on short-term active policy interventions and long-term structural reform. This paper examines policies in liberal welfare states that encourage people receiving disability benefits to participate in the labor market. Examples from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia of active labor market programs aimed at moving people with disabilities from workfare are analyzed in the context of international disability rights and neoliberal discourse. The paper explores the extent to which new approaches to activation policies are facilitating parity of participation and factors that impact the effectiveness of these policies.     

The social model of disability: thirty years on

This year marks exactly 30 years since I published a book introducing the social model of disability onto an unsuspecting world and yet, despite the impact this model has had, all we now seem to do is talk about it. While all this chatter did not matter too much when the economy was booming, now it no longer booms it is proving disastrous for many disabled people whose benefits and services are being severely cut back or removed altogether. In the article I restate my view of what the social model was and what I see as its potential for improving the lives of disabled people. Finally I focus on the unfortunate criticisms of it and the disastrous implications these have had for disabled people.