| Abstract: | The term 'service users' has come to be increasingly used both in the UK and beyond to describe people on the receiving end of health, welfare and social care policies and services, including disabled people. This use of language is contentious. It has come in for criticism as presenting people in passive, consumerist terms. However, many disabled people, and others, use the term of themselves. This article seeks to develop discussion about this terminology and suggests that as well as being used by state and service system in regressive and pejorative ways, it may also serve as a unifying concept which has helped groups to act with solidarity and to challenge and seek to improve their status in society. In this way, it may parallel the terms 'disabled' and 'disability' as used within social approaches to disability. |
