Welfare reform on the Web (October 2006): Services for the disabled - UK

Citizenship and vulnerability: disability and issues of social and political engagement

A.E. Beckett

Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006

The book reinterprets current understandings of citizenship and social movements through a focus on the nature of the disability movement in the UK. It proposes a new model of active citizenship that rests upon an understanding of vulnerable personhood. It addresses three key issues:

• How might it be possible to reconsider citizenship in the light of the experience of disabled people?
• What do disability organizations believe to be the basis of their ‘struggle’?
• How might we reconsider current theories of social movements and ‘citizen engagement’ in the light of disability and the concerns of the UK disability movement?

Independent futures: creating user-led disability services in a disabling society

C. Barnes and G. Mercer

Bristol: Policy Press, 2006

This book reviews and analyses developments in the field of disability-related support services which are controlled and run by the disabled people themselves. It offers a picture of disabled people’s attempts to change the direction of welfare services and facilitate moves towards ‘independent living’. It includes material from the first national study of user-controlled services and identifies the principal forces – economic, political and cultural - that influence and inhibit further development of such services.