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With contributions from distinguished authors in 14 countries across 5 continents, this book provides a unique transnational perspective on intellectual disability in the twentieth century. Each chapter outlines different policies and practices, and details real-life accounts from those living with intellectual disabilities to illustrate their impact of policies and practices on these people and their families.
Bringing together accounts of how intellectual disability was viewed, managed and experienced in countries across the globe, the book examines the origins and nature of contemporary attitudes, policy and practice and sheds light on the challenges of implementing the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCPRD).
131 SIx Equality, identity and disability introduction Consistent with social work codes of ethics and mainstream social policy objectives, the disability rights movement (DRM) promotes the universal values of equal rights and individual autonomy, drawing heavily on Kantian philosophy. However, I argue here that an anti-universalised Nietzschean perspective is also promoted via specific interpretations of the social model of disability, explored in Chapter Five, that challenge the political orthodoxy of rights-based social movements and the aspirations of
107 FIVE Egalitarianism, disability and monistic ideals introduction In this chapter, I argue that the medical and social models of disability, while establishing clearly located poles for understanding competing interpretations of disablement, allow for a range of interpretations between these two extremes. In this light, the chapter outlines these various interpretations, to help clarify the different types of claim made by the disability rights movement (DRM) as related to the equality and diversity debate explored in previous chapters. Briefly put, the
67 FOUR Intellectual disability in twentieth-century Ghana Jane Abraham and Auberon Jaleel Odoom Ghana, a country in West Africa with a current population of just under 30 million, was a British colony until 1957 (previously called the Gold Coast), when it became the first colony in sub-Saharan Africa to regain its independence. Prior to independence, Britain, as the colonial power, extracted natural resources – gold, diamonds, timber and cocoa. Britain built railways and transport systems to assist resource extraction. A few Western-style hospitals and
121 TEN Beliefs about disability Summary The introduction of new benefits in the 1970s reflected a shift in social attitudes to disabled people and recognition that society had a role in responding to their financial needs. Policy since then has, with rare exceptions, been a response to fears that the changed attitudes and benefit provisions may have created excessive, or indeed illicit, demand for benefits. Survey evidence on the extent of disability has proved influential, increasing the climate for policy reform, although the definition and measurement of
, disability and infirmity form rather more contingent sources of social division in part because of the temporal flux within which they emerge. There is a distinction, for example, between the predictable status of becoming aged and the less predictable status of becoming disabled, ill or infirm. Most people see bodily change as constituting the ‘authentic’ basis of age and ageing; reminders of the inevitable temporality that is attached to identity, location and status. Those changes that are evidenced by the ageing body, which do not reflect illness or impairment, best
165 THIRTEEN The economy and disability Summary The link between the economy and caseloads is likely to be most direct in the case of Incapacity Benefit. Incapacity Benefit caseloads rose at a constant rate throughout most of the period to 1999. The growth was primarily the result of fewer people leaving benefit, resulting in an increase in the length of spells that people spent on benefit. Benefit claims increased as a direct result of more women working, who, when they became disabled, were entitled to benefit on account of their contribution record. Increased
It’s because of my physical appearance and because I’m Asian that I am bullied. Sometimes people make fun of me and ruin my belongings but I don’t tell my parents. ( Ditch the Label, 2018 : 15) Introduction This chapter turns to those children at increased risk of poverty either through their belonging to a non-white ethnic minority or through their own or a family member’s disability. As well as having an increased risk of living in poverty, these are circumstances that, when combined with poverty, have an interactive effect. Ethnicity While the
51 5 Social policy and disability Colin Cameron In this chapter I will explore the relationship between social policy and the experience of disability, drawing on perspectives developed by disabled people and using the UK as a case study. I will look at contested meanings of both terms, social policy and disability, and develop an argument suggesting that social policy has largely constructed disability as dependency. I conclude that the aspiration to equality for disabled people remains one which requires continued struggle and that progressive intentions
ELEVEN Disability: prospects for social inclusion Carol Thomas Introduction Disability was a topic of interest to Peter Townsend from the earliest days in his academic and policy-oriented career. From the 1960s onwards he recognised that disability was always present somewhere in the mix that sculpted poverty and socioeconomic disadvantage in communities – especially among old people and in families with disabled children. His long-standing interest in social conditions, social relationships and the unequal distribution of resources meant that social
