Adjustment to Disability

Abstract

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

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.     

Disabled People,Health Professionals and the Social Model of Disability: Can there be a research relationship?

The social model of disability is proposed as an alternative to models that have viewed disability as an individual, rather than a socio-political issue. The use of this model to guide both research theory and practice is proposed in order to equalise research power relationships, and involve and empower disabled people. Health professionals have traditionally reinforced the medical model of disability in both research and practice, and this has been seen as contributing to the oppression and marginalisation of disabled people. If the social model is to achieve wider dissemination, it would appear important to develop a dialogue between disabled people and health professionals. However, because of negative perceptions it can be difficult for health professionals to find an appropriate position in relation to disabled people, research and the social model of disability. While not denying the past, it appears essential to look at ways in which disabled people and health professionals can work together to overcome the oppression and marginalisation that has been linked to the provision of health services.     

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.     

Abuse and Disabled People: Vulnerability or social indifference?

This paper analyses current literature surrounding issues of abuse and disability, and discusses whether the forms of abuse experienced by disabled people results from an individual vulnerability, or as a consequence of social attitudes towards disabled people. Three case studies form supportive evidence, and have been compiled from personal research, they represent a combination of abusive features, rather than any one individuals situation. The study hopes not to suggest that all disabled people are especially vulnerable to abuse, but asks if society and existing welfare services acknowledge and respond to allegations of abuse without prejudice to disability. This study formed my dissertation paper as a student on the BA (Hons) Social Work and Welfare Studies at the University of Central Lancashire, and I would like to thank my dissertation tutor, Bob Sapey, for his guidance and support throughout the study.     

Cheats,charity cases and inspirations: disrupting the circulation of disability-based memes online

With the increasing part online self-performance plays in day-to-day life in the twenty-first century, it is not surprising that critiques of the way the daily social drama of disability plays out in online spaces and places have begun to gain prominence. In this article, I consider memes as a highly specific style or strategy for representing disability via social media sites. I identify three commonly circulating categories of meme – the charity case, inspiration and cheat memes – all of which offer representations that people with disabilities find highly problematic. I then investigate the ways in which disabled people have begun to resist the representation and circulation of these commonly circulating categories of memes, via the production of counter or parodic memes. I focus, in particular, on the subversive potential of these counter memes, within disability communities online and within broader communities online.     

Moving the Boundaries of Feminist Social Work Education with Disabled People in the Neoliberal Era

Until recently social work education in Australia has either marginalised or neglected disability by omission. Given the increasing number of disabled people in the community, the teaching of social work within a disability studies emancipatory paradigm as an essential part of the curriculum is long overdue. As many social work educators have suggested, we are at a critical moment in Australia, where the policy environment in which social work is embedded has largely been reframed in line with neoliberal trends. For disabled people, this has meant an ongoing state campaign to diminish disability entitlements, from decreasing disability social security regimes through to the rationalisation of adult disability support and care schemes. Social workers are negotiating the competing demands of these policy constraints alongside the needs of the disabled people they work with. New moral dilemmas have emerged where they are actively faced with the question of ‘who to serve?’.     

Autonomy in Everyday Life,for Whom?

A disability reform came into force in Sweden in 1994 which emphasises the importance for disabled people to increased autonomy and self determination in everyday life. Interviews with disabled women and men have shown that while there are those who, because of the legislation, have increased control in their everyday living, there are also those who in no way have benefited from this reform. Some of the disabled participants have not even heard of the legislation before the time of the interview. They are in a situation that they require support, which they do not have, in order to apply for services of their choice and, if necessary, appeal against 'negative' decisions with regard to the applied for services. The paper concludes with a discussion about the Janus-faced nature of individual rights.     

Nothing to be had 'off the peg': consumption, identity and the immobilization of young disabled people

Contemporary sociology makes the case that the concepts of society and social structure are past their sell-by dates. Our world is marked by impermanence and social life is characterised by mobilities. Even self-identity has become liquid. Social actors use consumption artefacts and services to re-design themselves in ways that are commensurate with their deepest desires. However, we argue that disabled people are unlikely to recognise themselves in these debates. Young disabled people, in their quest for identity and consumer citizenship, meet with ubiquitous barriers and closed markets. In their experience choice and mobility are rhetorical. They encounter immobilization and exclusion from the kinds of consumer lifestyles that their non-disabled peers take for granted. Furthermore, we argue, that at the heart of consumer culture is an aesthetic of youthfulness that is profoundly alien to 'the anomaly'. The signifiers of 'youth' and disability are in profound tension. Cultures of consumption are constituted in ways that mark young disabled people off as outsiders who need not apply for entry.     

The exclusion of older people in disability activism and policies — A case of inadvertent ageism?

Using Sweden as a case, the article discusses the tendency within disability activism and policies to overlook elderly people. From an analysis of a major Swedish government investigation on disability it is clear that disability policies in Sweden have come to rest upon stereotyped age norms that divide the life course into set stages, and there has been a tendency to define elderly disabled people as elderly rather than disabled. It is argued that this exclusion is partly the result of a successful endeavor to provide disabled people of younger ages with rights that are typical of non-disabled citizens. Justice and equality have been defined in comparison to citizens of similar ages: children, youth and adults of “active age”. Based on the analysis of the paper it is argued that activities of movements struggling to liberate oppressed populations may contribute to ageism, and that anti-ageist research must go beyond the idea that ageism is a simple matter of attitudes towards older people.     

‘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.