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six Disability Introduction Social citizenship rights have never been fully extended to disabled people and, as a result of this, disabled people are over-represented among the unemployed and experience higher rates of poverty and in general do not enjoy a standard of living that is comparable with current social expectations. Over time there has been an uneasy relationship between healthcare professionals and disabled people. Professional social work has operated from a framework that encourages paternalism and dependency as part of an individualised
119 8Disability Practice scenario kate is a 31-year-old woman with a degenerative condition that necessitates using a wheelchair. She lives in the family home with her mother and brother in a rural area. Her mother works part-time as a cleaner and her brother stacks shelves in the nearby supermarket. Her benefits bring her a greater income than either her mother or brother earn and she feels guilty about this. the family have no transport. She has recently come out to her social worker as lesbian but she does not want her family to know. Her condition
Disabled people report high levels of harassment worldwide, often based on intersectional characteristics such as race, gender and age. However, while #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter have highlighted ongoing experiences of sexual and racial harassment, disability harassment has received little attention.
This book focuses on legal measures to combat disability harassment at work. It sets disability harassment in its international context, including its human rights framework, and confronts the lack of empirical information by evaluating the Irish legal framework in practice.
It explores the capacity of the law to address intersectional harassment, particularly that faced by disabled women, and outlines the barriers to effective legal solutions.
4.1 Introduction This chapter outlines the social and legal context for disability harassment in Ireland. Ireland is a member of the EU; as such, it is bound by EU law, including the FED, making it a suitable comparator for other EU member states or for states with an EU legal legacy, such as the UK. It has also ratified the CRPD, making its experience relevant to the many jurisdictions that have ratified that convention. Ireland’s legislative provisions on disability harassment are comprehensive and, in most respects, exemplify compliance with both the
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
117 8 Meta-narratives of disability1 Authored with Mary-Dan Johnston In his book of the same title, Marshall Gregory discusses how we are shaped by stories. For Gregory, what is at stake in the stories that we hear is the way stories construct the world, the way stories invite responses and the way that stories exert shaping pressure, because ‘both the “knowledge” offered by stories and our seldom denied responses constitute kinds of practice, modes of clarification and sets of habits for living that, once configured and repeatedly reinforced, accompany us
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
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
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
