Human rights at the heart of the social work curriculum

ABSTRACT

Social work policy and practice all over the world continue to face the impact of the neoliberal agenda. Similarly, social work education has been subject to the economic and political changes, with an increasing emphasis on a discourse of ‘evidence-based practice’. However, it is the core of social work programs in higher education to initiate students in the fundamental values of social work, as they are recognized in the global definition of social work. In order to prepare future social workers for their assignment, human rights should be given an explicit place in the social work curricula at Universities and Universities of Applied Sciences.

For human rights to gain more attention in social work programs in higher education, a Manifesto was written by lecturers’ social work in the Netherlands and Flanders, with a 5-point program to include human rights in the social work curricula. In this article, we elaborate on the five objectives that are presented in the Manifesto. Throughout the paper, we introduce small ‘case examples’ of how human rights can be integrated in education. These experiences show the importance of developing a particular social work perspective on human rights that is found in the idea of ‘human rights from below.’     

Promoting rights or avoiding litigation? The introduction of the human rights act 1998 into adult social care in England

Rights to social care in England have traditionally been highly restricted. By placing positive obligations on social care agencies and practitioners to make provision for vulnerable adults, the incorporation of the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law through the Human Rights Act 1998 promised to extend their reach. Yet transforming a set of largely procedural rights into something more substantive requires the active intervention of social care practitioners. This article firstly examines the fit between human rights and the policy and operational contexts of social care before exploring the views of social workers included in a recent interview study. Whilst the findings point to a willingness on the part of some to advocate on behalf of vulnerable adults, they also highlight the extent to which individualistic beliefs about dependency and responsibility reinforce the dominant construction of citizenship rights under the current government as contingent upon the fulfilment of responsibilities. Treating the Human Rights Act as a weapon of litigation, the article concludes, simply reinforces defensive practice. Progressive change is best supported by fostering a human rights culture in social care which, in turn, depends upon challenging social workers’ assumptions about the nature of dependency, responsibility and rights.     

Access to higher education for disabled students in South Africa: a contradictory conjuncture of benevolence, rights and the social model of disability

The structures of support services for disabled students in the South African higher education system find themselves in a contradictory conjuncture of rights, benevolence and the social model of disability. To elucidate this argument, this paper (a) outlines the status of support provisions for disabled students in South Africa; (b) compares the state of these support provisions with those of the UK and the USA; (c) compares the different paths taken by South Africa and the developed countries in general towards disability rights. It concludes that South Africa seems to be moving along a contradictory path and that it should make a commitment to prioritize equal access to higher education for disabled students.     

Disability-policy models in European welfare regimes: comparing the distribution of social protection,labour-market integration and civil rights

This paper examines different models of disability policy in European welfare regimes on the basis of secondary data. OECD data measuring social protection and labour-market integration is complemented with an index which measures the outcomes of disability civil rights. Eurobarometer data is used to construct the index. The country modelling by cluster analysis indicates that an encompassing model of disability policy is mainly prevalent in Nordic countries. An activating and rehabilitating disability-policy model is predominant mainly in Central European countries, and there is evidence for a distinct Eastern European model characterized by relatively few guaranteed civil rights for disabled people. Furthermore, the Southern European model, which indicates a preference for social protection rather than activation and rehabilitation, includes countries which normally have diverse welfare traditions.     

Public health,research and rights: the perspectives of deliberation panels with politically and socially active disabled people

Public health research purports to provide the evidence base for policies, programmes and interventions to improve the health of a population. However, there is increasing awareness that the experiences of disabled people have played little part in informing this evidence base. This paper discusses one aspect of a study commissioned by England’s National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to review the implications for public health of theories and models of disability. This part of the study focused on the development of a tool or decision aid to promote ethical inclusion of disabled people in public health randomised controlled trials (RCTs) and evaluative research. The tool was introduced at four regional ‘deliberating panels’ involving politically and socially active disabled people. In addition, we held a panel with public health professionals. The deliberation panels debated how the focus of public health was narrowing, why disability was excluded and positive and negative issues with using rights to guide research and evaluative practice. Politically active disabled people argued for a social model of human rights to guide any rights based tools or decision aids in public health and disability research.     

Citizenship, immigration, and the European social project: rights and obligations of individuality

As envisioned by T.H. Marshall, social citizenship was a corrective to the injustices caused by the capitalist market. Entitlements and protections guaranteed by the welfare state would prevent social and economic exclusions that civil and political rights, on their own, simply could not. Such protections consequently would ensure social cohesion and solidarity, as well as a productive economy and market. European welfare states successfully followed this formula for the most part of the post-World War II period, however the last couple of decades witnessed significant changes. For one, the very meaning of 'work' and 'worker' on which the welfare state is based has changed - flexibility, risk, and precariousness have become defining elements of working life. The welfare state itself has gone through a transformation as well, increasingly moving away from a system of 'passive benefits' to 'social investment' in human capital. These developments are coupled with an emphasis on education in 'active citizenship', which envisions participatory individuals who are adaptable in an increasingly globalized society, and ready to contribute at local, national and transnational levels. The emergent European social project draws on a re-alignment between these strands: work, social investment, and active participation. In this article, I consider the implications of this project for immigrant populations in Europe in particular and for the conceptions of citizenship and human rights in general. In contrast to the recent commentary on the neoliberal turn and the return of nation-state centered citizenship projects in Europe, I emphasize the broader trends in the post-World War II period that indicate a significant shift in the very foundations of good citizenship and social justice. The new social project transpires a citizenship model that privileges individuality and its transformative capacity as a collective good. Thus, while expanding the boundaries and forms of participation in society, this project at the same time burdens the individual, rather than the state, with the obligation of ensuring social cohesion and solidarity, disadvantaging not only non-European migrants but also the 'lesser' Europeans. The new social project brings into focus the relationship between universalistic individual rights and their effective exercise. I conclude that rather than treating human rights and citizenship as a dichotomy we should pay attention to their entangled practice in order to understand the contingent accomplishments and possible expansions of citizenship in Europe.     

Fighting discrimination through litigation in the UK: the social model of disability and the EU anti-discrimination directive

The enactment of British and European legislation establishing rights for disabled people is an important step in combating discrimination and social exclusion. However, rights remain empty promises if they are not enforced. Litigation and test case strategies have become an important way of enforcing rights. This article explores why organizations might turn to the courts to achieve their policy goals and finds that this phenomenon is best explained not by the creation of legal bases or an expanding legal opportunity structure but rather by the adoption of the social, civil-rights model of disability by the disability movement. The social model, with its emphasis on individual rights, equality and reasonable accommodation laid the foundation for litigation strategies. Litigation is able to reduce exclusion through long-term socialization of norms of equality and through the short- and medium-term creation of incentives which encourage individuals to end discriminatory practices.     

Immigrant rights and social movements

The disciplinary fields of immigration and social movements have largely developed as two distinct subareas of sociology. Scholars contend that immigrant rights, compared to other movements, have been given less attention in social movement research. Studies of immigrant‐based movements in recent decades have reached a stage whereby we can now assess how immigrant movement scholarship informs the general social movement literature in several areas. In this article, we show the contributions of empirical studies of immigrant movements in four primary arenas of social movement scholarship: (a) emergence; (b) participation; (c) framing; and (d) outcomes. Contemporary immigrant struggles offer social movement scholarship opportunities to incorporate these campaigns and enhance current theories and concepts as earlier protest waves advanced studies of collective action.     

Disabled people,choices and collective organisation: examining the potential of cooperatives in future social support

Major shifts in funding, demography, personal expectations and the rise of a global disabled people’s movement require new and creative solutions to the choices and rights agenda into the twenty-first century. Direct payments and the individual employment of personal assistants is one clear and recognised path to independent living. However, there have been some reservations about the nature, process and impact of the broader personalisation agenda more generally within which direct payments and personal budgets are located. Some commentators point to the loss of the collective impulse in personalised approaches – ideas that were central to the development of the independent living movement and its founding principles. Some countries have seen the rise of collective responses to direct payment developments. This is explicable in terms of a suspicion of individualist underpinnings of personalisation coupled with a collective vision of social life. This article is based on an exploratory study of collective approaches in the field of direct payments where choice and social solidarity are being combined. Drawing on developments in Sweden, England and Wales, the article aims to inform possible future debates about direct payments and cooperative approaches and argues that greater user-control is not inimical to enhanced collective action.     

Values and rights: Content and form in social work education and practice

Social Work values have been the subject of extensive discussion relating to interpretation and their application in practice. A new discourse of rights now demands attention. It is argued that social work educators have not caught up with the central importance of rights. They have, as a consequence, failed to examine the difference between values and rights, and the importance of maintaining a balance between beliefs and compliance. This article argues that an analysis of the relationship between values and rights, and an awareness of the ways in which they crucially influence practice are vital to shaping the activity of social work in a world where, some have suggested, social work has become post-modern.     

Citizenship: reflections on a relevant but ambivalent concept for persons with disabilities

This article examines the significance of citizenship with respect to disability. The article first highlights the idea of citizenship as ‘social contract’. This means the possession of civil, political, economic, cultural and social rights as well as the exercise of duties in society. Due to societal barriers, many disabled persons have difficulties fulfilling citizenship roles. Further, this article draws on citizenship theories; it examines three types of citizenship participation – the social citizen, the autonomous citizen and the political citizen – and discusses their promises and ableist implications. To counterbalance the exclusionary aspects of citizenship, we argue that human rights prove important. At the same time, human rights are more easily proclaimed than enforced and citizenship remains a precondition for effectively implementing human rights. The article concludes that citizenship is a relevant but also ambivalent concept when it comes to disability; it calls for a critical understanding of citizenship in Disability Studies.     

‘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.     

Time for justice: safeguarding the rights of disabled children

This article reviews two core strategies for safeguarding the rights of disabled children and examines the extent to which these processes advance justice for children in accessing an inclusive and equitable education. The article evaluates the adequacy of the legal system in the face of increased evidence of exclusionary practices of schools, and the low uptake of the disability tribunal as a vehicle for redressing discriminatory practices. It reviews the work undertaken with schools to develop procedures and processes to support them in identifying disabled pupils in order to monitor the impact of their policies and practices. Although there were some limitations, this work provided a platform from which to ensure that schools engaged with their responsibilities and understood more about the ways in which a child’s impairment impacted on their participation in school life. Instead we are dependent on the work of voluntary associations to safeguard children’s rights.     

Understanding disabling barriers: a fruitful partnership between Disability Studies and social practices?

Disabled people are regularly denied their human rights, since policies and laws are hard to translate literally into practice. This article aims to make connections between social practice theories and Disability Studies, in order to understand the problems faced by disabled people, using different methods to look in detail at how practices are shaped and how disabled people get excluded. Disabled people are active agents in making change, both informally on an everyday basis and through formal actions. Thus we also suggest that the insights of disabled people could bring a fresh perspective to social practice theories, by troubling the taken-for-granted in our everyday lives.     

What rights for disabled children? Home enteral tube feeding in the community

The growing number of disabled children who are tube fed at home has important implications both for families and the professionals who support them. This paper reports on the preliminary findings of a project which aims to assess the practical, social and emotional impact of home enteral tube feeding (HETF) on the lives of disabled children and their families. The evidence presented here suggests that guidance and training on HETF for non-parent carers is both inadequate and inconsistent. Consequently access to education and social services may be restricted or even denied for disabled children on HETF as a direct result of their perceived need for nursing or medical care. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The rights of the child enabling community development to contribute to a valid social work practice with children at risk

This paper presents a way of thinking about and doing child protection work using community development (CD) principles to guide practice. It suggests that a useful addition to CD can be found within the rights of the child provisions in Human Rights conventions. Using examples from the authors' three countries to illustrate the work that practitioners do in their work with children at risk, we argue that social work practice can be enhanced by the inclusion of these principles and practices which are essentially core generic social work practice. However, much of social work with the protection of children is bound by ‘risk’ perceptions which result in investigatory approaches being used as a first action, often to the exclusion of preventive approaches. This article demonstrates that in very different situations from different environments, CD in concert with the principles of the rights of the child can assist good outcomes with children at risk. A model is presented for unifying the worldview of human/children's rights with social work's core concern, the protection of children, using generic social work skills.     

From multiple barriers to a co-prosperity society: the development of a legal system for disabled people in China

Abstract

The legal system for disabled people has progressed significantly since China’s government signed the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities 10 years ago. The newly released ‘New Progress in the Legal Protection of Human Rights in China’ has attracted widespread attention because it advocates that the protection of human rights for disabled people should be reflected not only in legislative and judicial aspects but also in administrative sectors and international affairs. This article explains that the legal system involving dozens of laws and decrees in China aims to break through multiple barriers experienced by disabled persons and is beneficial to building a co-prosperity society in China. With the vigorous development of the international disability rights movement, ways to seize domestic and international opportunities to build a disabled-friendly social atmosphere deserve additional research.     

Consequentialism,rights, and the new social welfare theory

Traditional consequentialist social welfare theory [SWT] is intendedly value-free and institutionless. It follows that, while unattenuated exchange and property rights are assigned an implicit, instrumental role in the achievement of first-best Paretian optima, little attention has focused on alternative rights construals, on their associated, correlative duties, and on the implications for SWT. This is true, even among economists who regard “freedom” as morally exigent.This paper argues that the rights which social welfare theorists regard as instrumentally important—and, therefore, legally sanctioned—need not, in consequentialist theory, be respected: The duties which are correlative to social welfare theorists' implicitly sanctioned rights may, in consequentialist terms, be overcome by purely utilitarian considerations. It follows, pari passu, that reliance on a goal-based efficiency standard is irreconcilable with respect for the rights which most economists either take to be intrinsically important or seek to justify. Granting this, normative analysis must take account of the logical and other tensions among consequences, rights, duties, and other dimensions of moral evaluation.     

Disability,social groups,and political citizenship

The problem raised in this article is whether disabled people can and should be considered as a social group with respect to political representation. The question is first discussed on the basis of theories of social and status groups. Next, the article examines how the topic is reflected empirically at the local political level in Norway, expressed by party political leaders and elected disabled representatives. The authors suggest that disabled people can and should be considered as a social group in relation to political representation. Not doing so, they argue, will in effect delay the process towards full recognition and active political citizenship.     

The case for humane education in social work education

Humane education focuses on the interconnectedness between human rights, environmental sustainability, and animal protection, and started in the United States in 1996 through the Institute of Humane Education. While social work and social work education has emphasized human rights, the ecological, person-in-environment perspectives need to be expanded to include environmental preservation and animal welfare considering the numerous negative consequences on the global ecosystems. This article makes the case that humane education is an interdisciplinary link for helping social work educators expand their definitions of environmental justice and human–animal relationships so that student ecological consciousness includes the welfare of humans, nonhumans, and the broader ecosystem in their pursuit of change. It offers practical suggestions for opportunities to do this in the social work curriculum.