 Subjects -> DISABILITY (Total: 100 journals)
|
|
|
- Rethinking Practices by Rethinking Expertise: A Relational Approach to
Family-Centred Inclusive Services
Abstract: This article focuses on the views and experiences of professionals providing specialised services to disabled children and their families. It is part of a larger research project that investigates the gap between policy ideals and service provision for young disabled children and their families in Iceland. Contrary to official policies, earlier findings based on the families’ perspectives reported strain and stress from fragmented and inflexible services. The findings presented here are based on three focus-group interviews, conducted with 13 professionals from six disciplines. The aim was to capture their views on their roles, responsibilities, and working conditions. A number of organisational and professional barriers were exposed along with an overall lack of awareness of the basic principles of family-centred services and the human rights relational approach to disability. Recommendations for service development are inspired by Edwards’ relational theory about building inter-professional and inter-organisational links to create high quality practices. Published on 2021-01-11 11:41:10
- Disability, Cycling and Health: Impacts and (Missed) Opportunities in
Public Health
Abstract: Public Health England recently launched an active travel strategy in which it advised local authorities, health professionals and community groups how to improve the physical and mental health of the population and to reduce health care costs by promoting walking and cycling. Despite highlighting the cost savings and health benefits across the population, disabled people are largely absent from the strategy. This is particularly notable given that people with disabilities have the poorest levels of mental and physical health. Moreover, cycling is easier than walking for most people with physical disabilities and is also crucial to mobility, exercise, and health. This paper draws on qualitative interviews with disabled cyclists to explore the physical and mental health impacts of cycling for disabled people. It also highlights the broader implications for wellbeing in terms of independence and autonomy and the deficit of knowledge about cycling for disabled people among health professionals and policy makers. Published on 2020-12-31 11:55:31
- ‘Obuntu Bulamu’ – Development and Testing of an Indigenous
Intervention for Disability Inclusion in Uganda
Abstract: There is need to learn from indigenous knowledge and concepts when studying disability and inclusion in resource-constrained settings.We describe the development and testing of the ‘Obuntu bulamu’ intervention, a peer-to-peer support disability inclusion intervention, starting from indigenous interpretations of belonging and humanity. ‘Obuntu bulamu’ is an accepted and consistent behaviour that signifies a shared set of values that promote well-being, togetherness, and unity.The intervention was co-created and tested by a team of children, parents, teachers, disability rehabilitation workers, and academics in Uganda. It consists of training sessions, peer support meetings, and activities for children, parents, and teachers around the themes ‘peer support’, ‘disability’, and ‘belonging’. Through qualitative participatory methods the feasibility and acceptability of the intervention was evaluated with 64 children, 64 parents, and 33 teachers in 10 communities in Wakiso district, Central Uganda. Published on 2020-12-30 11:49:28
- Revealing the Ideas in the Swedish Social Services Act Regarding Support
to Individuals with Disabilities
Abstract: A disability policy defines the relationship between the state and the disabled and is generally based on ideas in different legislation. These ideas have an impact on decision makers and the disabled’s everyday life and are under current pressure for change; therefore, it is important to thoroughly scrutinise the ideas, make them conscious and visible. The purpose of this study is to reveal the ideas expressed in the Swedish Social Services Act (SoL), which supports people with disabilities, and to compare the results with ideas expressed in the Swedish Disability Act (LSS). A text analysis of SoL identified the following ideas, that is, conceptions of reality and values: (1) the social contract and justice, (2) the collective and integration/normalisation, (3) the individual and autonomy and (4) decentralisation and the shift of power. There are great similarities between the ideas in the legislation, but there are also few but significant differences. Published on 2020-12-28 12:37:46
- Experiences of Visually Impaired and Blind Students in UK Higher
Education: An Exploration of Access and Participation
Abstract: Drawing on a small scale doctoral research project that engaged a critical disability studies (CDS) lens and is rooted in a Grounded Theory methodological approach, this paper explores the experiences of visually impaired and blind students regarding their access and negotiation of inclusion within UK higher education (HE). The emergent research findings, which here focus on the process and practical application of Disabled Student’s Allowance, accommodation within student living and, more broadly, social interactions within HE, reveal a liminal and bounded participation contrary to the ongoing processes and practices, within HE, which purport equity and inclusion.By foregrounding the voices of these visually impaired students, whilst expanding upon existing understanding of the experiences of disabled students, the important discussions of day-to-day social interactions and identity as a visually impaired person and student reveal an important juxtaposition between the rhetoric of inclusion and individual experience. Published on 2020-12-23 13:06:43
- Services, Systems and Policies Shaping the Built Environment for People
with Mobility Impairments
Abstract: Background: For people with mobility impairments, access to the built environment is essential to their community mobility. Services, systems and policies shape accessibility and affect the opportunities people have to participate in society.Aim: To gain an understanding of the accessibility policy of the built environment in Iceland through an exploration of policy documents.Method: Public policy documents regarding accessibility from official websites of local and national authorities in Iceland were collected and reviewed.Findings: This review summarizes policies and identifies critical concerns that need to be addressed to improve access to the built environment in Iceland: (1) inconclusive or incomplete information, (2) limited clarity in legislation and guidelines, (3) limited users’ involvement in policymaking, (4) insufficient monitoring of services and (5) limited fit with usability values. All those aspects are critical to ensure and protect disabled people’s rights to move around and participate in society. Published on 2020-12-18 12:07:09
- ‘Not Worth the Minimum Wage'’ Unpacking the Complexities of
Intellectual Disability and its Intersection with Employment Structures
Abstract: As a signifier of worth and recognition, employment is presented as a route to reduce inequality. Yet, for people who have an intellectual disability (ID) and are in receipt of social care, employment policy is often a site of tension. With less than six percent of working-aged people within this demographic in any form of employment in the UK (Learning Disabilities Observatory 2016), work is offered through a marginalised context, with individuals who wish to explore work often excluded from the very programmes set up to support them. Based on ethnographic research at a job club supporting people with an ID and using a case study narrative approach, I unpack the multifaceted reality of everyday life for learning disabled people struggling to access work, its intersections with national minimum wage legislation, and how space can be crafted in response to such exclusion. Published on 2020-12-11 12:24:19
- Involuntary Care and Treatment in Psychiatric Settings – Manifestations
of Power and Violence'
Abstract: In this article I am trying to disengage from the common forms of discussion about violence related to mental health service users/survivors, such as, for example, biomedical ideologies and statistical assertion that imply that service users/survivors are more likely to enact violence. I want to explore how service users/survivors experience involuntary ‘care and treatment’ in psychiatric facilities in Sweden today, and how their experiences can possibly be understood by taking into consideration the context, or more precisely the dominant ideologies/discourses surrounding mental and emotional distress/’madness’ in Western countries, i. e. the biomedical model/bio medical models, and by drawing on alternative and counter discourses around ‘madness’. Coming from a Mad Studies perspective, I argue, that the experiences the ‘women’ spoke about should be seen as manifestations of power and violence, and as breaches of Human Rights. Published on 2020-12-03 11:49:57
- Assemblage Theory and Its Potentialities for Dis/ability Research in the
Global South
Abstract: In this article, we present some potentialities of researching dis/ability in the global South from a new materialist and posthuman approach. We recognize that Southern disabled bodies are constituted in much more complex ways than those represented by globalized models of disability. Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory can be a powerful tool to both demodel dis/ability and map the geopolitical and biosocial forces that produce it. With this theory, we map the production of dis/ability in neoliberal Chile, connecting the 2019 Chilean protests, the sex education policies for children and youth with disabilities, and the neocolonial intensities of neoliberal-ableism. Through this analysis, we show how discursive-material practices of ablement and disablement are legitimized as civilizing technologies by global discourses of inclusion and economic productivity. The return to ontological questions is presented as an opportunity for Disability Studies in the global South to move towards decolonization. Published on 2020-11-19 10:57:56
- Listening Beyond Words: Swinging Together
Abstract: This paper draws on the making of a short video, called Swinging Together, produced in the context of an artistic participatory research project with people communicating beyond words. Our aim is to investigate how new materialist theories disrupt the production of ‘voice’ while working with a person labeled as ‘non-verbal’. We critique dominant functionalist and medical perspectives which reify ‘non-verbal’ only
as a lack. In disrupting ‘voice’, we learn how important it is not to search for a magical closure, a final singular form, or (special) method with instructions to follow, but to focus on the relational and procedural. Concepts as ‘leading-following’ (Manning 2009) ‘voice without subject’ (Mazzei 2016) and ‘bodying’ (Manning 2016) shape our encounter with Heleen, an 18-year-old young woman commonly considered as autistic, non-verbal, strange, and out of place. In scrutinizing concrete practices which she desires we are searching to make sense of how Heleen experiences the world. Published on 2020-11-17 12:11:36
|
Open Access journal
