Welfare reform on the Web (January 2007): Services for the disabled - UK

Disability rights and wrongs

T. Shakespeare

Abingdon: Routledge, 2006

The book challenges the prevailing social model of disability and instead promotes a pluralist, engaged and nuanced approach. It argues that disability studies need to re-engage with the fundamental questions of what disability is, and how the lives of disabled people can be improved. Topics discussed include:

• Dichotomies – the dangerous polarisations of medical model versus social model, impairment versus disability and disabled people versus non- disabled people
• Identity – drawbacks of the disability movement’s emphasis on identity politics
• Bioethics in disability – choices at the beginning and end of life, and in the field of genetic and stem cell therapies
• Care of social relationships – questions on intimacy, friendship and the role of non-disabled people

It’s about more than handrails

D. Platt

Community Care, Nov.30th -Dec. 6th 2006, p.34-35

The Disability Equality Duty which comes into force on December 6th 2006 offers the opportunity for cultural change within public bodies. This article discusses the impact of the new Duty on commissioners and providers of social care services and describes how the Commission for Social Care Inspection involves disabled people in its work.