Social Work with Disabled People

Reducing disablement with adequate and appropriate resources: a New Zealand perspective

“…A key tenet of social model discourse is that disabled people, rather than service providers, should have the control and power to decide how to meet their needs (Abberley 1992;Sim et al 1998;Oliver 2009;Oliver, Sapey, and Thomas 2012;Shakespeare 2014). The adoption of the social model here greatly influenced the research process and ultimately the findings (Thompson, Buckle, and Lavery 1988;Oliver 1992;Stone and Priestley 1996), which is a real strength of this study.…”

“…Regular consultation with the Reference Group ensured the research was conducted in an appropriate and acceptable way and assisted in translating the findings for the current policy and funding context. Most importantly, disabled people rather than health professionals identified resources best suited to meet their needs for participation in everyday life in the community, which addresses many of the problems identified with traditional needs assessment (Oliver, Sapey, and Thomas 2012).…”

“…Here, need is often assessed, defined and legitimized by health and social services professionals using their clinical expertise and an individual or medical model of disability that focuses on a person's function or impairment (Barnes 2000;Oliver, Sapey, and Thomas 2012). The empowerment of professionals over disabled people to legitimize needs has been widely criticized (Abberley 1992;Sim et al 1998;Oliver 2009;Oliver, Sapey, and Thomas 2012) and research suggests that their views may differ from those of their disabled patients (Kersten et al 2000), which means some needs may remain unmet.…”

‘Stuck In The Middle With You’: Towards Enabling Social Work with Disabled People

“…Detractors can often seem to be 'flat earthers' amidst the professional hegemony of delivering official policy and practice messages dispassionately (Holman and Cree, 1995;Brandon and Hawkes, 1998;Donnison, 2000). It is, then, not surprising that most of the books conveying the reality of disablement and the more enlightened and critical approach to professional standpoints have been written by disabled people and their close allies within UK disability studies (Morris, 1993;French, 1994;Oliver and Sapey, 1999;Barnes and Mercer, 2007). Perhaps the greatest academic drag on more progressive thinking around disability comes from the wider social science curricula itself.…”

“…Social work academics and their allies in disability studies are well placed to bring these levels of analyses together so that individual lived experiences and wider structures of oppression are both understood (Thomas, 1999(Thomas, , 2007. In concrete terms, this equates to the need to unearth the contradictions of policy (Roulstone and Morgan, 2009;Roulstone and Prideaux, 2012), educate for critical praxis (Harris and Roulstone, 2011;Oliver et al, 2012), engage with uncertainty, highlight the traps set in the benefits system for many disabled people, widen access to social work, whilst debating its future role in an enabling matrix of policies and services.…”