In its dealings with disabled people, New Labour has shifted the policy emphasis from benefits to work. A tightening of access to social security has been matched by the introduction of new employment-orientated programmes. However, closer scrutiny of these initiatives suggests that while the government has acknowledged the impacts of environmental and social barriers to work, it continues substantially to rely on traditional, medically informed, views of impairment and incapacity. As a result the policy focus remains, for the most part, at the level of the disabled claimant. This concentration on individuals as opposed to institutional performance forms a stark contrast with the government's approach in other sectors, especially the public sector, where attention has been centred less on the service user than on the regular and detailed measurement of institutional structures and outputs. The article therefore concludes that to redress the balance a more rigorous audit of private sector employment practices is needed if the government is to further its aim of social inclusion for disabled people and other excluded groups.
D isabled people are greatly under-represented in positions of authority within traditional charities. Using qualitative data from origina l empirical research, this paper identi® es some of the causes of their exclusion. The values, attitudes and beliefs of those who govern traditional charities accord largely with the`personal tragedy' or medical model of disability, and a major consequence of this perspective is that disabled people are con® ned to roles in which they have little opportunity to exercise power in the traditional volunta ry sector.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.