Bringing together researchers from the fields of social policy, economics, sociology and clinical psychology, this book offers new evidence on the inter-related problems faced by disability claimants, and identifies important lessons for policy. * Explores how reducing the level of UK benefit claiming among those with health limitations has been a priority for successive governments * Argues that current policy fails to reflect the evidence that people on long-term disability benefits face a complex combination of barriers to work and social inclusion * Demonstrates that there is a need for continuing inter-disciplinary research on the nature of the disability benefits problem and the efficacy of current policy solutions and public services

Disability and chronic illness represents a special kind of cultural diversity, the "other" to "normal" able-bodiedness. Most studies of disability consider disability in North American or European contexts; and studies of diversity in Japan consider ethnic and cultural diversity, but not the differences arising from disability. This book therefore breaks new ground, both for scholars of disability studies and for Japanese studies scholars. It charts the history and nature of disability in Japan, discusses policy and law relating to disability, examines caregiving and accessibility, and explores how disability is viewed in Japan. Throughout the book highlights the tension between individual responsibility and state intervention, the issues concerning how care for disability is paid for, and the special problem of how Japan is providing care for its large and increasing population of elderly people.

Addresses an Emerging Shift in Developing Countries The authors and contributors of Ambient Assisted Living have recognized that the demographic profile is changing in many developing countries and have factored in an inversion of the demographic pyramid. The technology of ambient assisted living (AAL), supports the elderly and disabled in their daily routines to allow for safe and independent living for as long as possible. Dedicated to ambient intelligence-electronic environments that are sensitive and responsive to the presence of people-Ambient Assisted Living highlights the technologies that center on the needs of these special interest groups, such as the elderly or people with disabilities. Beneficial to students, practitioners, and users of ambient assisted living (AAL), this text compiles scattered information on the subject, outlines the most important and significant work in related literature, and covers the latest hardware and software for ergonomic design pertaining to AAL. From inception to implementation, the text assesses what has been produced and researched so far and looks for trends and clues for the future. It reviews literature on AAL published since 2007 and describes the main features and areas of products or systems that interlink and improve new or existing technologies and systems. This text: Provides extensive coverage of the applications, software, and information management for AAL Contains an overview of the concepts related to AAL Includes a comprehensive review of the state of the art on pervasive and mobile health (m-health) applications Describes a set of projects and work with scientific relevance in AAL Introduces a framework focused on the monitoring and assistance of elderly persons living alone Discusses a prospective study on technological systems for people with cognitive disabilities Ambient Assisted Living highlights technologies that adapt to the user rather than the user adapting to the technology. This text proposes technologies that can enable assisted persons to live independently for longer and reduce the need for long-term care.

For people who are living with disability, including various forms of chronic diseases and chronic pain, daily tasks like lifting a glass of water or taking off clothes can be difficult if not impossible. In Activist Affordances, Arseli Dokumaci draws on ethnographic work with differently disabled people whose ingenuity, labor, and artfulness allow them to achieve these seemingly simple tasks. Dokumaci shows how they use improvisation to imagine and bring into being more habitable worlds through the smallest of actions and the most fleeting of movements---what she calls "activist affordances." Even as an environment shrinks to a set of constraints rather than opportunities, the improvisatory space of performance opens up to allow disabled people to imagine that same environment otherwise. Dokumaci shows how disabled people's activist affordances present the potential for a more liveable and accessible world for all of us.

This book considers early modern and postmodern ideals of health, vigor, ability, beauty, well-being, and happiness, uncovering and historicizing the complex negotiations among physical embodiment, emotional response, and communally-sanctioned behavior in Shakespeare's literary and material world. The volume visits a series of questions about the history of the body and how early modern cultures understand physical ability or vigor, emotional competence or satisfaction, and joy or self-fulfillment. Individual essays investigate the purported disabilities of the "crook-back" King Richard III or the "corpulent" Falstaff, the conflicts between different health-care belief-systems in The Taming of the Shrew and Hamlet, the power of figurative language to delineate or even instigate puberty in the Sonnets or Romeo and Juliet, and the ways in which the powerful or moneyed mediate the access of the poor and injured to cure or even to care. Integrating insights from Disability Studies, Health Studies, and Happiness Studies, this book develops both a detailed literary-historical analysis and a provocative cultural argument about the emphasis we place on popular notions of fitness and contentment today.

This collection explores the historical origins of our modern concepts of intellectual or learning disability. The essays, from some of the leading historians of ideas of intellectual disability, focus on British and European material from the Middle Ages to the late-nineteenth century and extend across legal, educational, literary, religious, philosophical and psychiatric histories. They investigate how precursor concepts and discourses were shaped by and interacted with their particular social, cultural and intellectual environments, eventually giving rise to contemporary ideas. The collection is essential reading for scholars interested in the history of intelligence, intellectual disability and related concepts, as well as in disability history generally. -- .

Over the past fifty years, design and branding have become omnipotent in the market and have made their way to other domains as well. Given their potential to divide humans into categories and label their worth and value, design and branding can wield immense but currently unharnessed powers of social change. Groups designed as devalued can be undesigned, redesigned and rebranded to seamlessly and equivalently participate in community, work and civic life. This innovative book argues that disability as a concept and category is created, reified, and segregated through current design and branding that begs for creative change. Transcending models of disability that locate it either as an embodied medical condition or as a socially constructed entity, this book challenges the very existence and usefulness of the category itself. Proposing and illustrating creative and responsible design, DePoy and Gilson include thinking and action strategies that are useful and potent for "undesigning", redesigning, and rebranding to meet the full range of human needs and to enhance full participation in local through global communities. Divided into two parts, the first section presents a critical examination of disability as a designed and branded phenomenon, exploring what exactly is being designed and branded and how. The second part investigates the redesign of disability and provides principles for redesign and rebranding illustrated with examples from high-tech to place-based sustainable strategies. The book provides a unique and contemporary framework for thinking about disability as well as providing relevant design and branding guidance to designers and engineers interested in embodiment issues.

Re-Presenting Disability addresses issues surrounding disability representation in museums and galleries, a topic which is receiving much academic attention and is becoming an increasingly pressing issue for practitioners working in wide-ranging museums and related cultural organisations.

This volume of provocative and timely contributions, brings together twenty researchers, practitioners and academics from different disciplinary, institutional and cultural contexts to explore issues surrounding the cultural representation of disabled people and, more particularly, the inclusion (as well as the marked absence) of disability-related narratives in museum and gallery displays. The diverse perspectives featured in the book offer fresh ways of interrogating and understanding contemporary representational practices as well as illuminating existing, related debates concerning identity politics, social agency and organisational purposes and responsibilities, which have considerable currency within museums and museum studies.

Re-Presenting Disability explores such issues as:

• In what ways have disabled people and disability-related topics historically been represented in the collections and displays of museums and galleries? How can newly emerging representational forms and practices be viewed in relation to these historical approaches?

• How do emerging trends in museum practice designed to counter prejudiced, stereotypical representations of disabled people relate to broader developments in disability rights, debates in disability studies, as well as shifting interpretive practices in public history and mass media?

• What approaches can be deployed to mine and interrogate existing collections in order to investigate histories of disability and disabled people and to identify material evidence that might be marshalled to play a part in countering prejudice? What are the implications of these developments for contemporary collecting?

• How might such purposive displays be created and what dilemmas and challenges are curators, educators, designers and other actors in the exhibition-making process, likely to encounter along the way?

• How do audiences disabled and non-disabled respond to and engage with interpretive interventions designed to confront, undercut or reshape dominant regimes of representation that underpin and inform contemporary attitudes to disability?

Personalisation means people, their families and carers having choice and control over their support on a day-to-day basis. To deliver personalised services, professionals and carers need to do more than just hand over financial control: they need to know what is important to a person, the best way to support them, how they communicate and how they make decisions. This book will show how to deliver personalisation through simple, effective and evidence-based person-centred practice that changes people's lives and helps them achieve the outcomes they want. It covers why person-centred practice is relevant to the personalisation agenda and what person-centred thinking and person-centred reviews are, introducing the tools that can help you carry them out. It also explores the relationship between person-centred plans and support plans, and how person-centred practice can be used in the journey of support through adulthood - from prevention or the management of long-term health conditions to reablement, recovery, support in old age and at the end of life. There is also a chapter on taking a person-centred approach to risk. This is an essential guide for all staff in health and social care including service providers, managers, practitioners and students.

This book will help prepare the reader to work across disabilities by providing knowledge and training grounded within the ecological framework in four principal areas. The four principal areas reader will be trained in are: the societal environment and disability; disability and the individual experience; essential skills for social work micro, mezzo, and macro practice with people with disabilities; and the resource and support network for persons with disabilities. The book is organized around four units, each of which addresses one of the areas noted. It is not the purpose of this book to enable the reader to gain expertise in any one disabling condition or impairment. Rather, the goal is to provide a broad base of knowledge and skills, which will enable the reader to work effectively across a variety of disabling conditions. Special educators, social workers,parents

The Routledge History of Disability explores the shifting attitudes towards and representations of disabled people from the age of antiquity to the twenty-first century. Taking an international view of the subject, this wide-ranging collection shows that the history of disability cuts across racial, ethnic, religious, cultural, gender and class divides, highlighting the commonalities and differences between the experiences of disabled persons in global historical context. The book is arranged in four parts, covering histories of disabilities across various time periods and cultures, histories of national disability policies, programs and services, histories of education and training and the ways in which disabled people have been seen and treated in the last few decades. Within this, the twenty-eight chapters discuss topics such as developments in disability issues during the late Ottoman period, the history of disability in Belgian Congo in the early twentieth century, blind asylums in nineteenth-century Scotland and the systematic killing of disabled children in Nazi Germany. Illustrated with images and tables and providing an overview of how various countries, cultures and societies have addressed disability over time, this comprehensive volume offers a global perspective on this rapidly growing field and is a valuable resource for scholars of disability studies and histories of disabilities.

Championing the liberatory potential of silence to address the fraught disability politics of queerness In queer culture, silence has been equated with voicelessness, complicity, and even death. Queer Silence insists, however, that silence can be a generative and empowering mode of survival. Triangulating insights from queer studies, disability studies, and rhetorical studies, J. Logan Smilges explores what silence can mean for people whose bodyminds signify more powerfully than their words. Queer Silence begins by historicizing silence's negative reputation, beginning with the ways homophile activists rejected medical models pathologizing homosexuality as a disability, resulting in the silencing of disability itself. This silencing was redoubled by HIV/AIDS activism's demand for "out, loud, and proud" rhetorical activities that saw silence as capitulation. Reading a range of cultural artifacts whose relative silence has failed to attract queer attachment, from anonymous profiles on Grindr to ex-gays to belated gender transitions to disability performance art, Smilges argues for silence's critical role in serving the needs of queers who are never named as such. Queer Silence urges queer activists and queer studies scholars to reconcile with their own ableism by acknowledging the liberatory potential of silence, a mode of engagement that disattached queers use every day for resistance, sociality, and survival. Cover alt text: Background detail of a painting on canvas shows a partial view of the upper body and face of a figure, bearded and naked; title in painted script.

Amputation need not always signify castration; indeed, in Jack London's fiction, losing a limb becomes part of a process through which queerly gendered men become properly masculinized. In her astute book, Vulnerable Constitutions, Cynthia Barounis explores the way American writers have fashioned alternative-even resistant-epistemologies of queerness, disability, and masculinity. She seeks to understand the way perverse sexuality, physical damage, and bodily contamination have stimulated-rather than created a crisis for-masculine characters in twentieth- and early twenty-first-century literature. Barounis introduces the concept of "anti-prophylactic citizenship"-a mode of political belonging characterized by vulnerability, receptivity, and risk-to examine counternarratives of American masculinity. Investigating the work of authors including London, William Faulkner, James Baldwin, and Eli Clare, she presents an evolving narrative of medicalized sexuality and anti-prophylactic masculinity. Her literary readings interweave queer theory, disability studies, and the history of medicine to demonstrate how evolving scientific conversations around deviant genders and sexualities gave rise to a new model of national belonging-ultimately rewriting the story of American masculinity as a story of queer-crip rebellion.

Law and Neurodiversity offers invaluable guidance on how autism research can inform juvenile justice policies in Canada and the United States. In Canada, the diversion of youth away from formal processing has fostered community-based strategies for serving those with autism. US policies rely more heavily on formal responses, often employing juvenile custody facilities. Building on a rigorous exploration of how assessment, rehabilitation, and community re-entry differ between the two countries, Law and Neurodiversity offers a much-needed comparative analysis of autism and juvenile justice policies on both sides of the forty-ninth parallel.

This book presents an in-depth discussion of how human disability and parental advocacy have been constructed in American society, including recommendations for a more authentically inclusive vision of parental advocacy. The authors provide a cultural-historical view of the conflation of racism, classism, and ableism that have left a deeply entrenched stigma-one that positions children with disabilities and children of color as less valuable than others. To redress these inequities, the authors offer a working model of co-constructed advocacy designed to benefit all families. Because advocacy is not a "one size fits all" endeavor, the authors propose meeting families where they are and learning their strengths and needs, while preparing and repositioning families to empower themselves.Book Features: Takes a cultural-historical view that explores the reasons why individuals with disabilities are so stigmatized. Shows how the intersection of different stigmatized identity markers, such as poverty, race, and language, have been woven into negative interpretations of "difference." Celebrates the history of parent advocacy in the United States since World War II. Examines how social and racial privilege have dictated which parent voices are heard. Proposes collaborative approaches that can produce more authentic and more representative advocacy. Explores the motivations and purposes that drive parent advocacy.

What prenatal tests and down syndrome reveal about our reproductive choices When Alison Piepmeier-scholar of feminism and disability studies, and mother of Maybelle, an eight-year-old girl with Down syndrome-died of cancer in August 2016, she left behind an important unfinished manuscript about motherhood, prenatal testing, and disability. In Unexpected, George Estreich and Rachel Adams pick up where she left off, honoring the important research of their friend and colleague, as well as adding new perspectives to her work. Based on interviews with parents of children with Down syndrome, as well as women who terminated their pregnancies because their fetus was identified as having the condition, Unexpected paints an intimate, nuanced picture of reproductive choice in today's world. Piepmeier takes us inside her own daughter's life, showing how Down syndrome is misunderstood, stigmatized, and condemned, particularly in the context of prenatal testing. At a time when medical technology is rapidly advancing, Unexpected provides a much-needed perspective on our complex, and frequently troubling, understanding of Down syndrome.

Including people with disabilities fully into Canadian society, with the rights enjoyed by non-disabled people, requires a fundamental social transformation, not simply "fixing" some bodies. It requires deep changes in the attitudes, cultural images and policies that make people with disabilities invisible, set them aside, undermine or reject their contributions and value, and justifies their neglect, abuse and death. This shift involves the simple recognition and honouring of the dignity, autonomy and rights of all people, including those who experience disabilities. In the second edition of About Canada: Disability Rights, Deborah Stienstra explores the historical and current experiences of people with disabilities in Canada, as well as the policy and advocacy responses to these experiences. Stienstra demonstrates that disability rights enable people with disabilities to make decisions about their lives and future, claim rights on their own behalf, and participate actively in all areas of Canadian society. Disability rights can and does increase access to and inclusion in critical areas like education, employment, transportation, telecommunications and health care. Additionally, Stienstra identifies new approaches and practices, such as universal design, disability supports and income supports, that can transform Canadian society to be more inclusive and accommodating for everyone.

Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities provides a unique contribution not currently available in the professional literature by addressing the experiences and perspectives of families living with or raising a child with a disability. Designed for family therapists, social workers, and other helping professionals, it provides empirically-based, practical information for working with families experiencing intellectual and developmental disabilities of a loved one. This book also provides important information for navigating the various professional systems of care with which these families interface: health care providers, early childhood intervention teams, educational systems, the legal system, and financial planners.

Drawing on rich empirical work emerging from core conflict regions within the island nation of Sri Lanka, this book illustrates the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development. This pathbreaking book shows the critical role that women with disabilities play in post-armed conflict rebuilding and development. Through offering a rare yet important insight into the processes of gendered-disability advocacy activation within the post-conflict environment, it provides a unique counter narrative to the powerful images, symbols and discourses that too frequently perpetuate disabled women's so-called need for paternalistic forms of care. Rather than being the mere recipients of aid and help, the narratives of women with disabilities reveal the generative praxis of social solidarity and cohesion, progressed via their nascent collective practices of gendered-disability advocacy. It will be of interest to academics and students working in the fields of disability studies, gender studies, post-conflict studies, peace studies and social work.

Teaching Music to Students with Autism is a comprehensive practical guide for music eductors who work with students with autism. Authors and veteran music educators Alice M. Hammel and Ryan M. Hourigan offer an approach centered in inclusion designed for music educators, music teacher educators, and all those who have an interest in the education of students with autism. In this second edition, the authors offer fully up-to-date information on the diagnosis of autism, advocating for students and music programs, and creating and maintaining a team-approach when working with colleagues. A significant portion of the book is focused on understanding the communication, cognition, behavior, sensory, and socialization challenges inherent in students with autism and ways to structure classroom experiences and learning opportunities for all students. A chapter of classroom snapshots (vignettes) written by teachers in the field of music education provides additional opportunities to transfer information to 'real life' situations. Finally, the book offers a chapter of print and web resources for further study.

Spread out over many years and many different publications, the late author and activist Marta Russell wrote a number of groundbreaking and insightful essays on the nature of disability and oppression under capitalism. In this volume, Russell's various essays are brought together in one place in order to provide a useful and expansive resource to those interested in better understanding the ways in which the modern phenomenon of disability is shaped by capitalist economic and social relations. The essays range in analysis from the theoretical to the topical, including but not limited to: the emergence of disability as a "human category" rooted in the rise of industrial capitalism and the transformation of the conditions of work, family, and society corresponding thereto; a critique of the shortcomings of a purely "civil rights approach" to addressing the persistence of disability oppression in the economic sphere, with a particular focus on the legacy of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990; an examination of the changing position of disabled people within the overall system of capitalist production utilizing the Marxist economic concepts of the reserve army of the unemployed, the labor theory of value, and the exploitation of wage-labor; the effects of neoliberal capitalist policies on the living conditions and social position of disabled people as it pertains to welfare, income assistance, health care, and other social security programs; imperialism and war as a factor in the further oppression and immiseration of disabled people within the United States and globally; and the need to build unity against the divisive tendencies which hide the common economic interest shared between disabled people and the often highly-exploited direct care workers who provide services to the former.