Suchergebnisse

This paper follows up on qualitative interviews conducted with British disabled people in 1994-6, exploring how people's lives and relationships have changed over twenty years (n=8). The themes include imagery and identity, access to relationships, social context and attitudes. Ageing brought greater self-acceptance, and also lower salience of impairment; but for some, it also brought co-morbid chronic health issues which made life more complicated. Respondents generally felt that social attitudes to disabled sexuality had not changed sufficiently, but also that UK austerity policies risked undermining hard-won independence and wellbeing.

This paper follows up on qualitative interviews conducted with British disabled people in 1994-6, exploring how people's lives and relationships have changed over twenty years (n = 8). The themes include imagery and identity, access to relationships, social context and attitudes. Ageing brought greater self-acceptance, and also lower salience of impairment; but for some, it also brought co-morbid chronic health issues which made life more complicated. Respondents generally felt that social attitudes to disabled sexuality had not changed sufficiently, but also that UK austerity policies risked undermining hard-won independence and wellbeing.

This paper follows up on qualitative interviews conducted with British disabled people in 1994–6, exploring how people's lives and relationships have changed over twenty years (n = 8). The themes include imagery and identity, access to relationships, social context and attitudes. Ageing brought greater self-acceptance, and also lower salience of impairment; but for some, it also brought co-morbid chronic health issues which made life more complicated. Respondents generally felt that social attitudes to disabled sexuality had not changed sufficiently, but also that UK austerity policies risked undermining hard-won independence and wellbeing.

AbstractThe World Report on Disability was requested by the World Health Assembly, the governing body of the World Health Organization (WHO). Because disability is broader than health, WHO partnered with the World Bank. The World Report was published in 2011 and provides a comprehensive scientific analysis on the global situation of people with disability that can support the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability. Progress since the global launch of the Report in June 2011 has shown areas of awareness raising, policy development, funding, research, and technical support. Yet gaps exist, and there is a need to better inform policy and practice with particular reference to intellectual disability. The World Report on Disability makes nine recommendations: enable access to mainstream policies, systems, and services; invest in specific programs and services for people with disabilities; adopt a national disability strategy and plan of action; involve people with disabilities; improve human resource capacity; provide adequate funding and improve affordability; increase public awareness and understanding of disability; improve disability data collection; and strengthen and support research on disability. The World Report on Disability has increased awareness and understanding of issues affecting people with disability, and is serving to focus government attention on policies and programs that will support the implementation of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability, 2006. Particularly in the world's poorest countries, people with intellectual disabilities are disproportionately disadvantaged. The World Report is an important tool to build a global commitment to the promotion of inclusion for all persons with disabilities, and especially those with intellectual disability.

Personal assistance is an innovative role within social care whereby disabled people directly employ others to provide support. Defining personal assistance as a commodified support relationship is insufficient as it fails to capture the lived complexity of these relationships. This article reports on qualitative interviews in England with 30 disabled people and 30 personal assistants. In the absence of any normative interpretive framework, participants defined their relationships through metaphor: 'paid friends', 'staff' and 'quasi-family'. We explore the structure and significance of these descriptors, and offer an overview of the emotional, social and cultural dynamics that shape personal assistance relationships, and give them meaning.

The aim of this paper is to argue for the utility of a relational model of disability, as a way of conceptualizing dementia. We explore whether dementia should be considered as a disability, and whether people with dementia might consider themselves as disabled people. We review examples of, and issues raised by, the political activism of people with dementia. We consider how language constructs dementia negatively. We discuss how the environment influences the experience of dementia. In conclusion, we show that a relational model of dementia lays the basis for a human rights approach to the condition, based on collaborative partnerships between people with dementia and people from other disability communities.

The article argues for the utility of a relational model of disability, as a way of conceptualising dementia. It explores whether dementia should be considered as a disability and whether people with dementia might consider themselves as disabled people. Examples of, and issues raised by, the political activism of people with dementia are considered as is the way in which language can construct dementia negatively. The ways in which the environment influences the experience of dementia is considered. In conclusion, the paper shows that a relational model of dementia lays the basis for a human rights approach to the condition, based on collaborative partnerships between people with dementia and people from other disability communities.

The biopsychosocial model (BPS) of mental distress, originally conceived by American psychiatrist George Engel in the 1970s and commonly used in psychiatry and psychology, has been adapted by Gordon Waddell and Mansel Aylward to form the theoretical basis for current UK government thinking on disability. Most importantly, the Waddell and Aylward version of the BPS has played a key role as the government has sought to reform spending on out-of-work disability benefits. This article critiques Waddell and Aylward's model, examining its origins, its claims and the evidence it employs. We argue that its potential for genuine interdisciplinary cooperation and the holistic and humanistic benefits for disabled people as envisaged by Engel are not now, if they ever have been, fully realised. Any potential benefit it may have offered has been eclipsed by its role in Coalition/Conservative government social welfare policies that have blamed the victim and justified restriction of entitlements.