Welfare Reform on the Web (October 2005): Services for the Disabled - Overseas

The empowerment of marginals: strategic paradoxes

D. van Houten and G. Jacobs

Disability and Society, vol.20, 2005, p.641-654

Article discusses the disability movement in the Netherlands and the dilemmas it faces in developing strategies for the empowerment of disabled people. Calls for the development of a new model of citizenship in which all people are included and given equal respect regardless of their age, gender, sex, religion or disability.

The myth of transition: contractualizing disability in the sheltered workshop

M. Gill

Disability and Society, vol.20, 2005, p.613-623

Argues that sheltered workshops in the USA exploit disabled people, paying them meagre wages and offering no route out into higher paid jobs. The workshop no longer affords the individual opportunities to learn vocational skills, but has become an institution that creates its own army of workers that will never escape because of their disability status.