Suchergebnisse

The parents, especially mothers, of disabled children play a crucial role in coordinating care for their children. This article investigates families' coordination work using qualitative accounts of the parents of disabled children in Norway. The theoretical concepts of the third shift, hidden work and a broad definition of care are applied. We present a typology of coordination work, consisting of writing, meetings, administration of services, learning, monitoring and emotional work. We describe three cases to show the nature and consequences of having to coordinate the everyday lives of disabled children. The findings show that coordination work is gendered, individualised and taken for granted in service provision. We argue that coordination work should be better recognised in social policy design for these families to provide adequate services and avoid reproducing social inequality.

This article examines why employers struggle to include disability as part of their active diversity approach. Drawing on cross-national interview data from Norway and the USA, we point to the common finding of employers – who are the target of regulatory disability employment policies – typically falling into the passive employer category of employer engagement, with positive attitudes but negative hiring behaviour. As a partial explanation, we demonstrate the difficulty of identifying and demographically monitoring disabled people among job seekers and employees. We argue that these problems are linked to unique aspects of disability as a diversity category, and tie these to the significance of disability heterogeneity, lack of disclosure and the difficulty of acquiring information related to health. We conclude that organisations need to go beyond mere legislative compliance and be more proactive towards disability as a distinct diversity category.