Whose lives count as fully human? The answer matters for everyone, disabled or not. The ancient Greek ideal linked physical wholeness to moral wholeness - the virtuous citizen was "beautiful and good." It's an ideal that has all too often turned deadly, casting those who do not measure up as less than human. In the pre-Christian era, infants with disabilities were left on the rocks; in modern times, they have been targeted by eugenics. Much has changed, thanks to the tenacious advocacy of the disability rights movement. Yesteryear's hellish institutions have given way to customized educational programs and assisted living centers. Public spaces have been reconfigured to improve access. Therapies and medical technology have advanced rapidly in sophistication and effectiveness. Protections for people with disabilities have been enshrined in many countries' antidiscrimination laws. But these victories, impressive as they are, mask other realities that collide awkwardly with society's avowals of equality. Why are parents choosing to abort a baby likely to have a disability? Why does Belgian law allow for euthanasia in cases of disability, even absent a terminal diagnosis or physical pain? Why, when ventilators were in short supply during the first Covid wave, did some states list disability as a reason to deny care? On this theme: - Heonju Lee tells how his son with Down syndrome saved another child's life. - Molly McCully Brown and Victoria Reynolds Farmer recount their personal experiences with disability. - Amy Julia Becker says meritocracies fail because they value the wrong things. - Maureen Swinger asks six mothers around the world about raising a child with disabilities. - Joe Keiderling documents the unfinished struggle for disability rights. - Isaac T. Soon wonders if Saint Paul's "thorn in the flesh" was a disability. - Leah Libresco Sargeant reviews What Can a Body Do? and Making Disability Modern. - Sarah C. Williams says testing for fetal abnormalities is not a neutral practice. Also in the issue: - Ross Douthat is brought low by intractable Lyme disease. - Edwidge Danticat flees an active shooter in a packed mall. - Eugene Vodolazkin finds comic relief at funerals, including his own father's. - Kelsey Osgood discovers that being an Orthodox Jew is strange, even in Brooklyn. - Christian Wiman pens three new poems. - Susannah Black profiles Flannery O'Conner. - Our writers review Eyal Press's Dirty Work, Steve Coll's Directorate S, and Millennial Nuns by the Daughters of Saint Paul. Plough Quarterly features stories, ideas, and culture for people eager to apply their faith to the challenges we face. Each issue includes in-depth articles, interviews, poetry, book reviews, and art.

"Disability: a Life Course Approach" provides students and teachers with easy access to many of the most important current disability issues and debates. It provides a clearly focused account, and bridges some important gaps in the existing disability literature by including issues relevant to disabled people of all ages. If offers a unique approach to understanding disabling societies in a systematic way, using a novel life course approach.

This book examines how contemporary societies organise and control generational boundaries and progression through the life course for disabled people. There are specific chapters on birthrights and eugenics, childhood, youth transitions, interdependence and adulthood, old age and death and dying. The emphasis is on contemporary policy and politics (located within a broader sociological and cultural context) including the claims and struggles of the disabled people's movement. The discussion is framed within a social model approach and draws extensively on contemporary international debates about the citizenship and human rights of disabled people.

The book functions both as a resource guide and as a tool for learning. The various chapters include reviews of existing literature and theoretical debates, alongside specific examples of disabling policies and practices in different countries. There are also case studies illustrating key issues, together with relevant discussion and teaching points, and suggestions for further research and reading.

The book addresses an international readership and will be of particular interest to students and teachers of disability studies, sociology, human development, social policy;to professionals and students within rehabilitation and social work; and to disabled people and lay readers with an interest in contemporary disability issues and debates.

The rising cost of illness and disability benefits are one of today's biggest social and labour market challenges. The promise of activation-oriented work disability policies was labour market engagement for all people, regardless of illness, injury or impairment. However, the reality has been more complex. The Science and Politics of Work Disability Policy addresses social and political economic contexts driving state work disability reform in 13 countries. In this first attempt to explain the history and future of work disability policy, this book asks new questions about work disability policy design, focus, and effects. It details how work disability policies have evolved with jurisdictions, why these take their current shape, and where they are heading. The well positioned authors draw on their insider knowledge and expertise in law, medicine, and social science to provide detailed case studies of their jurisdictions. This pathbreaking volume will be of interest to social security system policy makers, scholars, and students in the health and social sciences.

Language Deprivation and Deaf Mental Health explores the impact of the language deprivation that some deaf individuals experience by not being provided fully accessible language exposure during childhood. Leading experts in Deaf mental health care discuss the implications of language deprivation for a person's development, communication, cognitive abilities, behavior, and mental health. Beginning with a groundbreaking discussion of language deprivation syndrome, the chapters address the challenges of psychotherapy, interpreting, communication and forensic assessment, language and communication development with language-deprived persons, as well as whether cochlear implantation means deaf children should not receive rich sign language exposure. The book concludes with a discussion of the most effective advocacy strategies to prevent language deprivation. These issues, which draw on both cultural and disability perspectives, are central to the emerging clinical specialty of Deaf mental health.

This introductory text defines and describes disability, while providing concrete practice guidelines and recommendations for students in the fields of counseling, social work, and the helping professions. Various specialty areas are explored in detail, including marriage and family counseling, adolescent counseling, addictions counseling, LGBTQ concerns, multicultural counseling, and career counseling. The first three chapters lay the foundations by discussing the demand for counseling services by individuals with all types of disabilities; presenting clinical, legal, medical/biological, and personal definitions of disability; and describing physical, cognitive, and psychiatric disabilities. Next, author Julie Smart examines core beliefs about disability using a range of first-person accounts from experienced counselors. The last six chapters focus on practice guidelines for various aspects of disability-including ethical considerations, societal issues, social role demands, and individual responses-and consider new possibilities for disability counseling professions. With rich case studies woven throughout, as well as valuable information on client needs, disability categorizations, and key Models of Disability, this essential textbook will be useful not only to counseling students but also to professional counselors, social workers, and psychologists.

'Incredible insight with a transgressive, witty, spirit.' COURTNEY LOVE 'The most sensational read of 2022!' GEMMA COLLINS 'A breath of fresh air... I want so many people to read this!' TRAVIS ALABANZA 'Visionary' VIV ALBERTINE A STYLIST MUST-READ FOR 2022 Wellness is oppressive, self-love is a trap, hustling is a health risk and it's all the patriarchy's fault. Poor Little Sick Girls is THE book for femmes who are online and want more from activism and life. Ione Gamble never imagined that entering adulthood would mean being diagnosed with an incurable illness. Watching identity politics become social media fodder from the confines of her sickbed Ione began to pick apart our obsession with self-care, personal branding, productivity and #LivingYourBestLife. Using her experience with disability to cast a fresh gaze on the particularly peculiar cultural moment in which young women find themselves, Poor Little Sick Girls explores the pressures faced - as well as the power of existing as - a chronically ill, overweight, and unacceptable woman in our current era of empowerment. Founder of Polyester zine and a host of The Polyester Podcast, Ione has been named one of fifteen coolest young Londoners by The Evening Standard, and a 2019 New Debutante in Tatler Magazine. If you love Trick Mirror, Feminists Don't Wear Pink and Hood Feminism,you don't want to miss this book.

This book provides a concise guide to international disability law. It analyses the case law of the CRPD Committee and other international human rights treaty bodies, and provides commentaries on more than 50 leading cases. The author elaborates on the obligations of States Parties under the CRPD and other international treaties, while also spelling out the rights of persons with disabilities, and the different mechanisms that exist at both domestic and international levels for ensuring that those rights are respected, protected and promoted. The author also delineates the traditional differentiation between civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other. He demonstrates, through analysis of the evolving case law, how the gap between these two sets of rights is gradually closing. The result is a powerful tool for political decisionmakers, academics, legal practitioners, law students, persons with disabilities and their representative organisations, human rights activists and general readers.

Sarah Merriman is just like any other urbane young woman in her twenties... She has a job in a Central London hotel, a boyfriend, commutes to work on the Tube, eats out, goes to films and theatre... This is all the more remarkable (though not to her) because Sarah was born with Down's Syndrome. Her parents having no prior inkling, it came as a huge shock to them that they now had a daughter with a disability. In 1999 her father Andy wrote a frank and moving book, A Minor Adjustment, about the challenge of her early years. The national publicity it gained saw it become a treasured resource for other families on a similar journey. Now he follows up with the inspirational story of how his daughter, whose favourite expression is `I love my life', has grown up, featured on Michel Roux's compelling Kitchen Impossible series, and is making a life of her own at a time when pre-natal testing is threatening the very existence of people with Down's syndrome. Sarah has contributed throughout.

Despite decades of activism, resistance, and education, both feminists and gender rebels continue to experience personal, political, institutional, and cultural resistance to rights, recognition, and respect. In the face of these inequalities and disparities, Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse seeks to engage with, and disrupt the long-standing debates, unquestioned conceptual formations, and taboo topics in contemporary feminist studies. The first half of the book challenges key concepts and theories related to feminist scholarship by advocating new approaches for theorizing interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, critical race theory, trans studies, and genetics. The second half of the book offers feminist critiques or explorations of timely topics such as the 2017 Women's March and Donald Trump's election as well as non-Western perspectives of family and the absence of women's perspectives in healthcare. Contributors comprise of leading scholars and activists from disciplines including gender and sexuality studies, African American studies, communication studies, sociology, political science, and media. Transgressing Feminist Theory and Discourse is a compelling examination of some of the most high-profile feminist issues today. It hopes to infuse future and current debates and conversations around feminism and feminist theory with intersectional, imaginative, provocative, and evocative ideas, inspiring bold cross-fertilizations of concepts, principles, and practices.

Examine issues of vital importance to you and your disabled clientstoday and in the years to come! This groundbreaking text provides you with up-to-date, authoritative information that will prove to be of critical importance for disability professionals in the coming years. It will leave you better informed about aspects of disability that have not been well covered in the literatureissues surrounding spirituality, civil rights, and the medical model vs. social (or minority) model (of viewing disability) controversy. You'll examine the impact of the Americans with Disabilities Act in the wake of the Supreme Court's narrowing of the Act's powers and explore newly developed theories designed to more accurately define the true meaning of disability. Disability Issues for Social Workers and Human Services Professionals in the Twenty-First Century explores: the currentand potentialroles of spirituality and religion in the rehabilitation process the use of medication in treating disabilitywith a study focusing on children in foster care whose emotional/behavioral disabilities are medically (rather than psychologically) treated Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in college studentshow it impacts them as a disability requiring academic accommodations disability as an aspect of cultural diversitywith suggested methods for educating the non-disabled about people with disabilities limitations on the civil rights of those with disabilitiesand what can be done to eliminate those limitations computer technologies designed to aid people with disabilitieswith an examination of a health promotion Web site for children with disabilities and their families disability and the managed mental health systemwith an examination of the differences in service utilization and satisfaction in rural and urban areas how disability can be viewed as a social construct, rather than something that is inherent to the disabled person Keeping current with new developments is imperative for social workers and other professionals whose work affects people with disabilities. Disability Issues for Social Workers and Human Services Professionals in the Twenty-First Century provides the information you need to stay on the cutting edge of progress in this rapidly evolving field.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"This is a highly readable and well-edited historical anthology, a wide-ranging collection that deals with mental retardation over two centuries. The book deserves perusal by anyone interested in mental retardation. The plot is powerful, and the questions profound."--"New England Journal of Medicine"

"strongly recommended"
-- "Library Journal"

"Interesting collection of pieces."
--"Gainesville Sun"

"Illuminates the history of mental retardation in America, a subject that has largely been ignored by scholars. This volume goes far beyond the history of institutional care, and covers such subjects as the role of families, changes in concepts of retardation and educational theory, and the role of the state. "Mental Retardation in America" will contribute toward a new understanding of the subject and serve as a stimulus to further research."

--Gerald N. Grob, Rutgers University

"The book will be of value to scholars concerned with the newly emerging history of disability."
--"Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences"

"The anthology provides sound links between the shaping of knowledge and circumstances from reports to legislatures, theses, and classifications of feebl-minded."
--"History of Education Quarterly"

aNoll ad Trentas book succeeds in deepening appreciation of the complex history of mental retardation and in suggesting issues for further study, making it an essential resource for scholars of disability history. Its accessible style and clear organization will also make it of interest to the lay reader...a
--Nursing History Review

The expressions "idiot, you idiot, you're anidiot, don't be an idiot," and the like are generally interpreted as momentary insults. But, they are also expressions that represent an old, if unstable, history. Beginning with an examination of the early nineteenth century labeling of mental retardation as "idiocy," to what we call developmental, intellectual, or learning disabilities, Mental Retardation in America chronicles the history of mental retardation, its treatment and labeling, and its representations and ramifications within the changing economic, social, and political context of America.

Mental Retardation in America includes essays with a wide range of authors who approach the problems of retardation from many differing points of view. This work is divided into five sections, each following in chronological order the major changes in the treatment of people classified as retarded. Exploring historical issues, as well as current public policy concerns, Mental Retardation in America covers topics ranging from representations of the mentally disabled as social burdens and social menaces; Freudian inspired ideas of adjustment and adaptation; the relationship between community care and institutional treatment; historical events, such as the Buck v. Bell decision, which upheld the opinion on eugenic sterilization; the evolution of the disability rights movement; and the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) in 1990.

Between 1939 and 1945 the Nazi regime systematically murdered hundreds of thousands of children and adults with disabilities as part of its "euthanasia" programs. These programs were designed to eliminate all persons with disabilities who, according to Nazi ideology, threatened the health and purity of the German race. "Forgotten Crimes" explores the development and workings of this nightmarish process, a relatively neglected aspect of the Holocaust. Suzanne Evans's account draws on the rich historical record as well as scores of exclusive interviews with disabled Holocaust survivors. It begins with a description of the Nazis' Children's Killing Program, in which tens of thousands of children with mental and physical disabilities were murdered by their physicians, usually by starvation or lethal injection. The book goes on to recount the T4 euthanasia program, in which adults with disabilities were disposed of in six official centers, and the development of the Sterilization Law that allowed the forced sterilization of at least a half-million young adults with disabilities. Ms. Evans provides portraits of the perpetrators and accomplices of the killing programs, and investigates the curious role of Switzerland's rarely discussed exclusionary immigration and racially eugenic policies. Finally, "Forgotten Crimes" notes the inescapable implications of these Nazi medical practices for our present-day controversies over eugenics, euthanasia, genetic engineering, medical experimentation, and rationed health care.

This edited volume provides a comprehensive analysis of deaf people as a culturally and linguistically distinct minority group within American society. Many educators, linguists, and researchers now favor this position, as opposed to that which states that a deaf person simply has an audiological disability. Contributors to this book include members of the deaf community, as well as prominent deaf and hearing educators and researchers. The text contains three sections, covering research on bilingualism and biculturalism, the impact of cultural and language diversity on the deaf experience, and first-hand accounts from deaf community members that highlight the emotional impact of living in the deaf and hearing worlds.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of human diversity by examining how issues of race, ethnicity, disability, religion, and sexual orientation affect daily interactions. With the increased awareness of cultural diversity, essays focus the reader on the many factors to consider in our ever-expanding society. Rather than adopting an elaborately theoretical style to explore these issues, the authors address the question of interaction in a clear and accessible style. Each essay, written by a leading scholar in the field, presents a different perspective on how appreciating and understanding human variety can enhance the quality of interactions between social groups.

Sacrificial Limbs chronicles the everyday lives and political activism of disabled veterans of Turkey's Kurdish war, one of the most volatile conflicts in the Middle East. Through nuanced ethnographic portraits, Aciksoez examines how veterans' experiences of war and disability are closely linked to class, gender, and ultimately the embrace of ultranationalist right-wing politics. Bringing the reader into military hospitals, commemorations, political demonstrations, and veterans' everyday spaces of care, intimacy, and activism, Sacrificial Limbs provides a vivid analysis of the multiple and sometimes contradictory forces that fashion veterans' bodies, political subjectivities, and communities. It is essential reading for students and scholars interested in anthropology, masculinity, and disability.

This is the republication of a study originally entitled The Deaf Child and his Family (1976), which was a landmark in the study of early deafness. Dr. Gregory's work, based on interviews with 122 mothers of deaf children under the age of six years, parallels that already done with hearing children and investigates with the same methodology the ways in which deaf children develop, change and are changed by their home and their wider environment. The book describes the everyday life of young deaf children and their families, looks at the deaf child's activities and daily routine and considers the support and advice given to the parents during the child's early years.

Published ten years after the first edition, this new Handbook offers topical, and comprehensive information on the welfare systems of all 28 EU member states and their recent reforms, giving the reader an invaluable introduction and basis for comparative welfare research. Additional chapters provide detailed information on EU social policy, as well as comparative analyses of European welfare systems and their reform pathways. For this second edition, all chapters have been updated and substantially revised, and Croatia additionally included. The second edition of this Handbook is most timely, given the often-fundamental welfare state transformations against the background of the financial and economic crises, transforming social policy ideas, as well as political shifts in a number of European countries. The book sets out to analyse these new developments when it comes to social policy. In the first part, all country chapters provide systematic and comparable information on the foundations of the different national welfare systems and their characteristics. In the second part, using a joint conceptual foundation, they focus on policy changes (especially of the last two decades) in different social policy areas, including old-age, labour market, family, healthcare, and social assistance policies. As the comparative chapters conclude, European welfare system landscapes have been in constant motion in the last two decades. While austerity is not to be seen on the aggregate level, the in-depth country studies show that all policy sectors have been characterised by different reform directions and ideas. The findings not only reveal both change and continuity, but also policy reversal as a distinct type that characterises social policy reform. The book provides a rich resource to the international welfare state research community, and is also useful for social policy teaching.

This book reports on the first substantial UK study of parenting, disability and mental health. It examines the views of parents and children in 75 families. Covering a broad spectrum of issues facing disabled parents and their families, Parenting and disability: provides a comprehensive review of relevant policy issues; explores the barriers to full participation in parenting that disabled parents face; examines the complex ways in which broader social divisions, including gender and socioeconomic status, interact with disability; advocates measures to support disabled parents and their families by promoting and supporting relationships within the family. The book is aimed at a wide audience, including students and academics in social policy, social work, disability studies, sociology, education, and nursing, people working in the voluntary sector, disabled activists and their supporters, as well as policy makers and practitioners in a range of statutory agencies.

Over the past two decades, there has been increasing recognition of the ways in which disabled children and adults have been denied human and civil rights that others take for granted. In the year 2000, the Human Rights Act 1998 came into force. This book reviews the implications of the Act for disabled people. The book provides: an overview of key policy and legislative developments in the UK in relation to disabled children and adults in the post war period; an outline of the European Convention on Human Rights, The Human Rights Act 1998 and related procedures; an account of the ways in which disabled people's human rights have increasingly become a matter of concern and the implications of the Human Rights Act in relation to specific issues; a debate about the ways in which public bodies and practitioners within them can engage positively with the provisions of the Human Rights Act to develop better practice. Disabled people and human rights will be of interest to both disabled people themselves and organisations representing their interests, professionals whose work brings them into contact with disabled people, and students of social work, social care, disability studies and law.

The onslaught of neoliberalism, austerity measures and cuts, impact of climate change, protracted conflicts and ongoing refugee crisis, rise of far right and populist movements have all negatively impacted on disability. Yet, disabled people and their allies are fighting back and we urgently need to understand how, where and what they are doing, what they feel their challenges are and what their future needs will be. This comprehensive handbook emphasizes the importance of everyday disability activism and how activists across the world bring together a wide range of activism tactics and strategies. It also challenges the activist movements, transnational and emancipatory politics, as well as providing future directions for disability activism. With contributions from senior and emerging disability activists, academics, students and practitioners from around the globe, this handbook covers the following broad themes: * Contextualising disability activism in global activism * Neoliberalism and austerity in the global North * Rights, embodied resistance and disability activism * Belonging, identity and values: how to create diverse coalitions for rights * Reclaiming social positions, places and spaces * Social media, support and activism * Campus activism in higher education * Inclusive pedagogies, evidence and activist practices * Enabling human rights and policy * Challenges facing disability activism The Routledge Handbook of Disability Activism provides disability activists, students, academics, practitioners, development partners and policy makers with an authoritative framework for disability activism.

Disability and Contemporary Performance presents a remarkable challenge to existing assumptions about disability and artistic practice. In particular, it explores where cultural knowledge about disability leaves off, and the lived experience of difference begins. Petra Kuppers, herself an award-winning artist and theorist, investigates the ways in which disabled performers challenge, change and work with current stereotypes through their work. She explores freak show fantasies and 'medical theatre' as well as live art, webwork, theatre, dance, photography and installations, to cast an entirely new light on contemporary identity politics and aesthetics.
This is an outstanding exploration of some of the most pressing issues in performance, cultural and disability studies today, written by a leading practitioner and critic.

The fields of Critical Disability Studies and Critical Animal Studies are growing rapidly, but how do the implications of these endeavours intersect? Disability and Animality: Crip Perspectives in Critical Animal Studies explores some of the ways that the oppression of more-than-human animals and disabled humans are interconnected. Composed of thirteen chapters by an international team of specialists plus a Foreword by Lori Gruen, the book is divided into four themes: Intersections of Ableism and Speciesism Thinking Animality and Disability together in Political and Moral Theory Neurodiversity and Critical Animals Studies Melancholy, Madness, and Misfits. This book will be of interest to undergraduate and postgraduate students, as well as postdoctoral scholars, interested in Animal Studies, Disability Studies, Mad Studies, philosophy, and literary analysis. It will also appeal to those interested in the relationships between speciesism, ableism, saneism, and racism in animal agriculture, culture, built environments, and ethics.

""Bending Over Backwards" is a welcome dismemberment of all that was unknowingly artificial from the start."
--"The Minnesota Review"

a[Its] uniqueness of thought is this collectionas strength as it makes for an interesting and proactive read.a
--American Journal of Occupational Therapy

"Davis's work offers creative and challenging examples that may be useful to our discipline and particularly to Disability historians. "Bending Over Backwards" remains an important and useful work for historians as a template for examining the myriad ways disability and Deafness infiltrate vital aspects of our identity, including laws, cultural icons, literature, and citizenship."
--"H-Net Reviews"

"Taken all together, the chapters offer an important, theoretically rich introduction to disability issues."
--"Novel"

"It is crucial, if at times uncomfortable, reading for medical professionals and scholars in the medical humanities alike. . . . Daring to mix the literary and the medical, the symbolic and the instrumental, the interpretive and the interventionist, Davis demonstrates what disability can teach us about the life that awaits any human baby."
--"Literature and Medicine"

"This superlative book is highly recommended for undergraduates, scholars, and researchers in the fields of disability studies, sociology, psychology, anthropology, ethics, and cultural studies."--"Choice"

"Lennard Davis is history in the making; for he is one of the foremost proponents of "disability studies," the newest theoretical kid on the block, noteworthy in part because it brings together scholars from the humanities and the medical sciences."
--Stanley Fish, in "Chicago Tribune"

aA collection of essays written over several years for different audiences, it contains fascinating traces of Davisas intellectual journey from novel theorist and Foucauldian to disability studeis scholar and memoirist.a--"American Literature"

With the advent of the human genome, cloning, stem-cell research and many other developments in the way we think of the body, disability studies provides an entirely new way of thinking about the body in its relation to politics, the environment, the legal system, and global economies.

Bending Over Backwards reexamines issues concerning the relationship between disability and normality in the light of postmodern theory and political activism. Davis takes up homosexuality, the Americans with Disabilities Act, the legal system, the history of science and medicine, eugenics, and genetics. Throughout, he maintains that disability is the prime category of postmodernity because it redefines the body in relation to concepts of normalcy, which underlie the very foundations of democracy and humanistic ideas about the body.

Bending Over Backwards argues that disability can become the new prism through which postmodernity examines and defines itself, supplanting the categories of race, class, gender, and sexual orientation.

A refreshing book that can hold the reader's interest throughout. Quality of Life and Disability should be a compulsory text for all students in the disability field and would make a useful one for experienced practitioners including social workers.' - Australian Social Work 'Among the recent proliferation of books on quality of life, this is a standout! Not only is Quality of Life and Disability: An Approach for Community Practitioners placed squarely in the disability field, but it has an applied emphasis that is rare for a topic that so abounds in vague and often conflicting theories and terminologies. Rather than burdening the reader with the conceptual conundrums of a construct as ambitious as whole of life quality, Brown and Brown dive into the real life issues. This quality of life text will appeal to many practitioners in the disability field. A welcome addition to the bookshelves of many practitioners.' - Paul Bramston, University of Southern Queensland, Australia 'Excellent guide demonstrating to practitioners, not only what they have to do to increase the quality of life of the people they look after, but also how they should start doing it.' - Wspolne Tematy 'A remarkably rich mixture of experience, guidance and insight into the determination of people's quality of life, and into ways in which a wide variety of care staff, managers and policy-makers can understand and respond to disabled people's wants and needs.' - Care and Health magazine 'One of the most refreshing approaches in the contemporary literature on quality of life and disability. The authors are to be congratulated for the very user friendly way the book has been designed.' - Trevor R. Parmenter, University of Sydney 'This book reflects the authors' extensive experience and admirable insight as they bring quality of life ideas closest to those who are in the best position to apply them - the practitioners. Useful, stimulating and well written.' - Robert L. Schalock, Hastings College, Nebraska 'The authors weave their text seamlessly, reminding us at every turn that quality of life varies across individuals, cultures and time... tightly-structured and practical.' - Patricia Noonan Walsh, University College, Dublin 'This excellent book is a valuable contribution to training literature in the field of community rehabilitation.' - Mitchell Clark, Mount Royal College, Calgary, Canada Quality of life - physical, psychological and environmental well-being - is a crucial consideration for professionals working with people with a disability. The authors of this practical book apply ideas about quality of life to the field of disability to assist front-line professionals, managers and policy-makers in effective service provision. They examine the historical context of the concept of quality of life and discuss the application of quality of life in the daily lives of people who have disabilities. Using recent studies to show how the development of quality of life approaches have led to changes in rehabilitation, and how an understanding of the issue can inform practice in assessment, intervention, management and policy, this is an indispensable book for all practitioners and managers working with people with disabilities.