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General principles requiring contextual adaptation regarding optimal policy related governance of health related rehabilitation in less resourced settings were developed from a literature review and realistic synthesis. A systematic review of literature published since 2003 was carried out. Multiple reviewers selected articles for inclusion in the realistic synthesis.  A Delphi survey of expert stakeholders refined and triangulated findings from the realist synthesis. Context mechanism outcome pattern configurations (CMOCs) were identified from the literature and then developed into statements for the Delphi survey, whereby 18 expert stakeholders refined these statements to achieve consensus on recommendations for policy related governance of health related rehabilitation. Several broad principles emerged throughout formulation of recommendations: participation of persons with disabilities in policy processes; collection of disaggregated disability statistics; explicit promotion in policies of access to services for all subgroups of persons with disabilities and service-users; robust inter-sectoral coordination; and ‘institutionalising’ programmes.

Background: Persons with disabilities continue to be excluded from professions in South Africa despite legislation on non-discrimination and equity. Objectives: We sought to identify both the opportunities and obstacles that students with disabilities face in professional degrees.

Method: Selected texts from the South African and international literature were analysed and synthesised.

Results: Students with disabilities are afforded opportunities to graduate into professions through the current climate of transformation, inclusion and disability policies, various support structures and funding. These opportunities are mitigated by obstacles at both the higher education site and at the workplace. At university, they may experience difficulties in accessing the curriculum, disability units may be limited in the support they can offer, policies may not be implemented, funding is found to be inadequate and the built environment may be inaccessible. Fieldwork poses additional obstacles in terms of public transport which is not accessible to students with disabilities; a lack of higher education support extended to the field sites, and buildings not designed for access by people with disabilities. At both sites, students are impacted by negative attitudes and continued assumptions that disability results from individual deficit, rather than exclusionary practices and pressures.

Conclusion: It is in the uniqueness of professional preparation, with its high demands of both theory and practice that poses particular obstacles for students with disabilities. We argue for the development of self-advocacy for students with disabilities, ongoing institutional and societal transformation and further research into the experiences of students with disabilities studying for professional degrees.

La idea de deconstrucción analítica del concepto de contingencia da espacio a un ‘juego’ del pensamiento con relación a lo azaroso como naturalizado, cuando de hecho, al plantearlo desde la normalización, ya trae su correlato desde la ideología de la normalidad. Se invita a reconocer la temática en su tensión entre lo que se dice y lo que se hace, a partir del análisis reflexivo de algunas categorías analíticas y su referenciación con sensaciones y percepciones de sujetos concretos que hacen a personas en situación de discapacidad de la población económicamente activa. Bajo el rótulo de normalidad, en estas sociedades contemporáneas se van mezclando naturalizaciones que no son más que construcciones sociales que remiten a la producción y reproducción de la Ideología hegemónica. Todo está construido para hacer creer que lo contingente es tal, la normalidad es tal, en un marco donde los procesos de objetivación individuales y colectivos tienden a resquebrajarse o desaparecer.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 2

This paper offers an analysis of the documentary film, Una Vida Sin Palabras [A life without words] (2011). The film follows a short period in the lives of a campesino family living in a rural area of Nicaragua as a teacher of Nicaraguan sign language, working for a local NGO, endeavours to teach three deaf siblings how to sign. Bringing together the critical practices of Disability and Subaltern studies in the specific context of contemporary Nicaragua, the paper argues: (1) that the film ultimately re-inscribes and reinforces the subalternity of the disabled subjects it sets out to portray; and (2) that the hierarchy it produces between its object – the deaf family – and its implied educated, metropolitan audience replays some influential (but, we would argue, politically limited) critiques of the failure of the first Sandinista Government (1979-1990) and other broad based radical political movements to represent the national popular. In so doing, the paper also makes a case for the political and intellectual importance of bringing a Critical Disability Studies perspective to the field of Subaltern Studies, and argues that an engagement with the problems that are presented by this film at the level of both form and content raise some important questions for both fields of enquiry.

Disability & the Global South (DGS), 2016, Vol. 3 No. 1

This systematic review analyses the methodology, collection, and results of fourteen individual studies that examined the effectiveness of fifteen different intervention methods to assist students with disabilities in low and middle income countries to improve the labour market situation

Campbell Systematic Reviews 2015:20

A literature review to evaluate quality of life and participation outcomes of individuals with earthquake-related physical injury. A systematic review was performed searching MEDLINE, Embase, PsychINFO, CINAHL and AMED electronic databases from 1966 to January 2014. Studies that measured quality of life or participation outcomes among individuals who acquired a physical disability as a result of an earthquake injury were included, with no limits on research design. The search yielded 961 potentially relevant articles after removal of duplicates. Of these, only 8 articles met the inclusion criteria. Seven papers were reviewed from the following 5 earthquakes: 2001 Gujarat earthquake, India; 2008 Wenchuan earthquake, China (also known as the Sichuan earthquake); 2005 Kashmir earthquake, Pakistan (27); 2009 Padang earthquake, Indonesia; 2010 Port-au-Prince earthquake.

Journal of Rehabilitation Medicine, vol.47, no.5, 2015, 385-393

10.2340/16501977-1965

Children with disabilities are often excluded from disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives and, as a result, can experience amplified physical, psychological, and educational vulnerabilities. Research on children with disabilities during disasters is lacking, and their potential value in helping shape inclusive policies in DRR planning has been largely overlooked by both researchers and policymakers. This article highlights the existing research and knowledge gap. The review includes literature from two areas of scholarship in relation to disasters—children, and people with disabilities—and provides a critique of the prevailing medical, economic, and social discourses that conceptualize disability and associated implications for DRR. The article analyzes the different models in which disability has been conceptualized, and the role this has played in the inclusion or exclusion of children with disabilities in DRR activities and in determining access to necessary resources in the face of disaster. Finally, the study explores possible pathways to studying the contribution and involvement of children with disabilities in DRR.

International Journal of Disaster Risk Science, Volume 6 Issue 1

A thematic literature review of the impact of CommunityBased Rehabilitation (CBR) in low to middle-income countries was conducted. The review covered the period from 2002 to 2012, and the CBR Matrix was utilised to provide structure for the evidence. Seven studies that investigated the impact of CBR interventions in developing countries were included. A modified harvest plot was used to summarise the strength and nature of evidence provided in relation to the CBR Matrix. Quantitative studies tended to focus on the Health domain, while qualitative studies generally focussed on the Social and Empowerment domains. No evidence of CBR impact was found in the Education domain, and very little evidence was found pertaining to Livelihood. Overall, the evidence base related to the impact of CBR remains limited, both in terms of quantity and robustness of design.

Disability, CBR and Inclusive Development (DCID), Vol 26, No 2

The vast majority of the world’s displaced people are hosted in the global South, in the poorest countries in the world. This is also a space with the highest numbers of disabled people, many of who live in extreme and chronic poverty. This poverty, alongside deprivation, wars, conflict, and environmental disasters is what drives people to flee, in search of security. This includes disabled people. In spite of this, this population (disabled forced migrants) continues to be cast in a shadow, of epistemological, ontological and practical invisibility. It is hardly theorised in forced migration studies and rarely contemplated in humanitarian intervention. The lives of disabled forced migrants are cast aside in a Eurocentric disability studies that remains global North-centric and focused, while Southern contexts and histories and the geopolitics that envelope them, are forgotten or never known. Migration theory grows without the disabled person, disability studies without the migrant, and practice without the disabled migrant. In this paper, we explore the disability/forced migration nexus with a view to understanding some of the critical intersectionalities that emerge, and their implications for theory and practice. We trace elements of the forced migration trajectory, from exodus, to crossing international borders, to life in protracted refugee camps, the use of networks and smugglers, to those related to national and human security. We argue that forced migration studies, as well as humanitarian practice continue to be premised on and adopting an ableist approach focused on heteronormative productive bodies, while disability studies, with a corpus of work premised on an assumption of citizenship, has failed to critically engage with issues of sovereignty, borders and bodies that lie beyond the protection of the Nation State. In this paper, we also question and contest dominant and hegemonic frames that are historically contextualized, alongside discourses and structures that not only produce forced migration, but also serve to perpetuate the global divide and inequalities. We conclude by calling for a critical interrogation of theoretical perspectives in both forced migration and disability studies, in policy and humanitarian action, and to work towards a praxis geared towards social justice for disabled forced migrants.

Disability and the Global South (DGS), 2015, Vol. 2 No. 1