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A growing number of young people in Sweden with intellectual disability have organized themselves during the last 15 years in self-advocacy groups for socializing, empowerment, and expressing opposition to the norms and attitudes in a society that labels them as disabled. At the same time, the Swedish welfare system has transformed dramatically with processes of far-reaching individualization, closure of the major institutions, decentralization of responsibility from the state to local governments, and an emerging welfare market where service users are turned into customers. The aim of this article is to analyse and discuss the significance of self-advocacy in the new welfare context. Data were collected over a period of more than 10 years using repeated interviews with members of two self-advocacy groups and participation observations. Findings suggest that participation in self-advocacy groups opens up members for increasing health and well-being through new roles and identities, and it strengthens their control over everyday life. Support is still needed, however, but in new ways; otherwise, the restrictions of the institutions will simply be reconstructed in the new welfare system.

The forthcoming book Dis/ability Studies: Theorising Disablism and Ableism argues that we are living in an historical epoch which might be described as neoliberal-ableism, in which we are all subjected to slow death, increased preca- rity and growing debility. In this paper we apply this analysis to a consideration of austerity with further reference to disability studies and politics.

People with dementia have been assumed to possess weak or even no agency, so this paper provides a novel contribution to academic debate by examining their actual potential for agency. The author draws on findings from a qualitative study of everyday decision-making by people with dementia that aimed to iden- tify the role of social factors (such as gender) in influencing their involvement in decisions. Whilst decision-making constitutes a form of deliberative agency, the research also identified when agency was alternatively habituated, embodied or emotional. The Economic and Social Research Council-funded research was undertaken in the North of England. Existing theoretical perspectives on agency are critiqued, particularly in relation to rationality, language and individualised agency. The study highlighted that people with dementia who lack deliberative capacity can nonetheless demonstrate creative capacity for agency. A more expansive concept of agency is needed in social science theory that is informed by the experiences of cognitively disabled people.

Critical disability studies (CDS) has emerged as an approach to the study of disability over the last decade or so and has sought to present a challenge to the predominantly materialist line found in the more conventional disability studies approaches. In much the same way that the original development of the social model resulted in a necessary correction to the overly individualized accounts of disability that prevailed in much of the interpretive accounts which then dominated medical sociology, so too has CDS challenged the materialist line of disability studies. In this paper we review the ideas behind this development and analyse and critique some of its key ideas. The paper starts with a brief overview of the main theorists and approaches contained within CDS and then moves on to normative issues; namely, to the ethical and political applicability of CDS.

Parent peer advocacy is a distinct type of empowering relationship practised in Parent to Parent New Zealand that shares experiential knowledge gained from raising a child with disability, chronic illness or special needs and draws on both partnership and participation ideals of support. This support organisation matches families with impairment, illness and genetic difference in light of issues they encounter as families with disability. In this paper we discuss disabling historical contexts countered by the provision of information as advocacy, ambivalence towards difference in the organisation, and the rise in prospective parents seeking parent peer support. These thematic areas allow us to create an analytical framework to be used in the next phase of an empirical study with Parent to Parent New Zealand.

Support through care and protection within a medical framework, rather than through the idea of independence within the least restrictive environment, continues to guide service provision for intellectually disabled people in the sexuality area. Past practices have included use of involuntary sterilisation. This article outlines the outcome of a search for information undertaken because of concerns that use of sterilisation-related procedures may remain embedded in contemporary approaches to sexuality support management. Verified instances of hysterectomy carried out between 1991 and 2001 were uncovered. Documents tabled at a Parliamentary Select Committee in 2003 expressing concerns about use in relation to young disabled girls were also found. Requests for sterilisation-related procedures exemplify how the right of all vulnerable citizens to full bodily integrity is currently adjudicated in New Zealand. It is suggested that further research is needed to pinpoint and address the underlying social customs through which requests for such procedures are negotiated and resolved.