This is a comparative analysis of the micro and macro characteristics of self-help organizations of people with disabilities (SHOPs) in seven selected countries and territories in Asia, namely China Mainland, Hong Kong, Japan, the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, and Vietnam. Since the 1980s, SHOPs have prospered in this region and were given a major role in the United Nations' forum and the International Year of Disabled Persons in 1981. The analysis shows the differences among the SHOPs in terms of the complexity of their structure, government's affirmative policy, legislation, and leadership qualities. These differences are due to the complex interplay among factors at local, national, and international levels.

SHOPs in this region present a rather homogenous perception in their organization, leadership, social inclusion, and globalization, despite the marked differences in their societies. SHOPs tends to be domocratic and consensual in nature, and led by elected members with assistance from paid professional and clerical support. The self-help organizations are positively regarded in these countries.

"This book explores the possibilities and limitations re-theorizing disability using historical materialism in the interdisciplinary contexts of social theory, cultural studies, social and education policy, feminist ethics, and theories of citizenship"--

Attention to embodiment and the religious significance of bodies is one of the most significant shifts in contemporary theology. In the midst of this, however, experiences of disability have received little attention. This book explores possibilities for theological engagement with disability, focusing on three primary alternatives: challenging existing theological models to engage with the disabled body, considering possibilities for a disability liberation theology, and exploring new theological options based on an understanding of the unsurprisingness of human limits.
The overarching perspective of this book is that limits are an unavoidable aspect of being human, a fact we often seem to forget or deny. Yet not only do all humans experience limits, most of us also experience limits that take the form of disability at some point in our lives; in this way, disability is more "normal" than non-disability. If we take such experiences seriously and refuse to reduce them to mere instances of suffering, we discover insights that are lost when we take a perfect or generic body as our starting point for theological reflections. While possible applications of this insight are vast, this work focuses on two areas of particular interest: theological anthropology and metaphors for God.
This project challenges theology to consider the undeniable diversity of human embodiment. It also enriches previous disability work by providing an alternative to the dominant medical and minority models, both of which fail to acknowledge the full diversity of disability experiences. Most notably, this project offers new images and possibilities for theological construction that attend appropriately and creatively to diversity in human embodiment.

Universal Design is Selwyn Goldsmith's new authoritative design manual, the successor to his internationally acclaimed Designing for the Disabled. A clear and concise design guide for practising and student architects, it describes and illustrates the differences there are between universal design and 'for the disabled' design Universal Design presents detailed design guidance for architects in an easily referenced form. Covering both public buildings and private housing, it includes informative anthropometric data, along with illustrative examples of the planning of circulation spaces, sanitary facilities, car parking spaces and seating spaces for wheelchair users in cinemas and theatres. It is a valuable manual in enhancing understanding of the basic principles of 'universal design'.The aim - to encourage architects to extend the parameters of normal provision, by looking to go beyond the prescribed minimum design standards of the Part M building regulation, Access and facilities for disabled people.

Three important issues have recently attracted researchers to study the economics of disability. First with the availability of sophisticated "data sets," it has become possible to conduct highly quantative investigations of the relative economic impacts of various types of disabling health problems. Second, the passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1991, and the subsequent implementation of its employment provisions, focused national attention on the continuing scarcity of employment opportunities for disabled persons. The tools of analysis that have been developed over the past several decades to study racial and gender discrimination in labor markets are applied in this book to study the experiences of persons with disabilities. Third, the past several decades have witnessed a rapid growth in the public and private costs of disability support programs. Many economists recognize the need to design such programs that would provide continued economic security, without the work disincentives, high budgetary costs, and efficiency losses of existing programs.

A major purpose of this volume is to bring together empirical studies dealing with all three of the above issues in a single volume. By doing this we can illustrate the breadth of current research in the field and allow the reader to see the connections and common threads that underlie this scope of concerns and research objectives.

Examines current theories and practices relating to disability in 1999. The focus of the work is not disabled people as "objects" of study but rather an analysis of disability as it has been historically and culturally constructed. The chapters cover: language and discourse; the Disabled People's Movement; the "disability" professions; public policy; unconscious investments and interpersonal relationships; knowledge and the politics of disability. The text should be of value to students on the growing number of Disability Studies courses, as well as students, policy-makers and professionals in social policy, social work and nursing.

Deborah Marks examines current theories and practices relating to disability. The focus of the work is not disabled people as 'objects' of study but rather an analysis of disability as it has been historically and culturally constructed and psychically experienced.
The chapters cover:
* language and discourse
* the disabled people's movement
* the 'disability' professions
* public policy
* unconscious investments and interpersonal relationships
* knowledge and the politics of disability.
This text will be essential reading for students on the 0415115175mber of Disability Studies courses, as well as students, policy-makers and professionals in social policy, social work, cultural studies and nursing.

The rubric "Quality of Life" first came to the explicit attention of the medical profession a little over thirty years ago. Despite the undoubted fact that each one of us has his or her own Quality of Life, be it good or bad, there is still no general agreement about its definition, or the manner in which it should be evaluated. Although much has been written about quality of life, this work has been largely concerned with population-based studies, especially in health policy and health economics. The importance of "individual" quality of life has been neglected, in part because of a failure to define quality of life itself with sufficient care, in part perhaps because of a belief that it is impossible to develop a meaningful method of measuring individual variables.
The editors of this book believe that the primary focus of quality of life is and must continue to be the individual, who alone can define it and assess its changing personal significance. The challenge of presenting this belief

To the British soldiers of the Great War who heard about it, "shell shock" was uncanny, amusing, and sad. To those who experienced it, the condition was shameful, unjustly stigmatized, and life-changing. The first full-length study of the British "shell shocked" soldiers of the Great War combines social and medical history to investigate the experience of psychological casualties on the Western Front, in hospitals, and through their postwar lives. It also investigates the condition's origin and consequences within British culture.

Please note: this book was originally published as Effervescence: A True-Life Tale of Autism and of Courage Please visit Simone's website to view more information, as well as TV and radio appearances: autismembrace.com or effervescentclarity.com An excerpt from Autism: Hot Pink and Zebra-Striped:

Imagine a beautiful little girl, with long curly, wild red hair, spinning in circles, completely delighted by all that she feels She wears a long, blue dress, a replica of the one Cinderella wore to the ball. As you watch her, you get the sense that she isn't dreaming of Cinderella; in her heart and in her body, she is Cinderella.

Now picture the same little girl, lying on her tummy, spinning on a merry-go-round, dipping her beautiful, long red hair in the puddle of mud that encircles the merry-go-round. When it comes to a stop, she savors the wonderful sensation of the cold mud running down her face. She then submerges her entire body in the puddle, as happy as can be and entirely oblivious to the stares of the people around her.

Now picture that same little girl, in her comfortable home, surrounded by a family who love and adore her. Her mom asks a simple question, like: "Sweetie, what kind of cereal would you like?" Instantly, her beautiful face is filled with intense emotion and she screams, more like a wild animal than a child, for five minutes, or it may continue for two hours. The only thing that might interrupt the screaming is her stopping, occasionally, to frantically bite her wrist, hard enough to leave teeth marks.

Would it surprise you to learn that I have just described a high-functioning autistic child?

Now take a peek at the same child at age twelve, entering her classroom each day. Her teacher marvels to herself, as she watches this young girl navigate skillfully, smoothly and seemingly naturally throughout the classroom. Had the teacher not known her student's history of autism, she likely would never have guessed. In her own words, the only time this teacher is aware of the child's autism, is when she reads the amazing stories and illustrations created by this extraordinary girl. She would then muse to herself: "There is no way a "typical" grade-seven student could write and draw like this "

Do you get the feeling that an amazing transformation has taken place? Is the child no longer autistic? Has she grown out of it? Has she learned through behavior management to "manage" it? Was she just "a little bit autistic" and now she's "better?" There is no simple answer; autism is far too complex and diverse a disorder for it to be addressed so simply. But it is a fascinating disorder and this child's life has been an incredible journey Her name is Genevieve.

Selwyn Goldsmith's Designing for the Disabled has, since it was first published in 1963, been a bible for practising architects around the world. Now, as a new book with a radical new vision, comes his Designing for the Disabled: The New Paradigm. Goldsmith's new paradigm is based on the concept of architectural disability. As a version of the social model of disability, it is not exclusively the property of physically disabled people. Others who are afflicted by it include women, since men customarily get proportionately four times as many amenities in public toilets as women - and women have to queue where men do not - and those with infants in pushchairs, because normal WC facilities are invariably too small to get a pushchair and infant into. To counter architectural disability, Goldsmith's line is that the axiom for legislation action has to be 'access for everyone' - it should not just be 'access for the disabled', as it presently is with the Part M building regulation and relevant provisions of the 1995 Disability Discrimination Act. In a 40-page annex to his book he sets out the terms that a new-style Part M regulation and its Approved Document might take, one that would cover alterations to existing buildings as well as new buildings. But architects and building control officers need not, he says, wait for new a legislation to apply new practical procedures to meet the requirements of the current Part M regulation; they can, as he advises, act positively now. This is a book which will oblige architects to rethink the methodology of designing for the disabled. It is a book that no practising architect, building control officer, local planning officer or access officer can afford to be without.

Cutting across a disciplinary divide, Sociologies of Disability critically reviews and compares the conflicting perspectives on disability and chronic illness found in disability studies and medical sociology. Thomas carefully outlines the historical development of both these approaches, providing readers with a solid understanding of the overlaps and divergences between the two fields. With a fresh interpretation of theoretical traditions in medical sociology, and an informed commentary on major debates in disability studies, this original text is necessary reading for all students of medical sociology and disability studies.

This book deals with the narrative discourse--specifically lifestories--of 16 patients suffering from Alzheimer's disease (AD). It attempts to understand the discourse of these patients in contextual terms. Thus far, the dominant explanation for "incoherence" in AD speech has been largely provided by research in psycholinguistics, much of which has understood AD speech in terms of the progressively deteriorating nature of the disease. This study provides a complementary view by examining ways in which some social factors--audiences, setting, and time--influence the extensiveness and meaningfulness of AD talk.
By offering both an examination of interactions across the data as well as analyzing particular cases in detail, this unusual study attempts to juxtapose some general insights regarding AD discourse with case-specific ones. Sociolinguistic analyses of the data demonstrate how certain audiences and particular settings set in motion discourse activities that either facilitate the patients' ability to recall their pasts or impede it. This analysis also includes a critical look at the researcher's contribution in negotiating and reinforcing these activities. Ethnographic details about the social worlds of some of these patients shed light on how larger social contexts at least indirectly contribute to exacerbating the patients' conditions or stabilizing them. The analyses of both context and language provides a more global understanding of the Alzheimer experience. This study also discusses some interactional strategies by which professionals can begin to engage AD patients in meaningful talk as well as ways by which they can better "hear" AD patients' cues at narrating. Throughout, this book underscores the need to factor in social factors when making assessments regarding AD patients' communicative abilities.

If you work with older adults who are developmentally disabled and are seeking ways to incorporate exercise, arts activities, and other activities into your program, this is the book for you! Older Adults With Developmental Disabilities and Leisure will help you improve your ability to instruct exercise and other fitness activities and, at the same time, increase your knowledge about aging and mental retardation and developmental disabilities. This combination of skills and knowledge is important to your understanding of your clients and their needs. You will assist them in leading a more active, structured life that will result in a higher sense of satisfaction in their daily living and health benefits that will speak for themselves.Older Adults With Developmental Disabilities and Leisure gives you specific guidelines for establishing fitness programs as well as ideas for offering clients goals and incentives that will evoke and maintain their enthusiasm to participate. Using a proven model, the Arts/Fitness Quality of Life Activities Program, the authors show how careful planning and sequencing can produce successful results, such as peer interaction, flexible thinking, self-expression, and improved mental health. As you learn about the key factors for programming for this group of clients, you will also learn about: the demographics of this population leisure education training and cross-training with aging specialists and mental retardation staff community integration and for whom it is appropriate inactivity in later life and the complications it causes life satisfaction and leisure participation differences in physical and cognitive functioning among this population consumer satisfaction among older adults with developmental disabilitiesIt is never too late to introduce leisure activities into the lives of those with developmental disabilities. With encouragement and careful guidance, you can lead your elders/clients into a more active and healthy life. Use Older Adults With Developmental Disabilities and Leisure as a guide to find activities and exercise programs that are appropriate, fun, and worthwhile!

Individuals with disabilities are often "desexualized" in our society, yet they have the same need for intimacy, self-worth, and social belonging as people without disabilities. Sexuality and Disabilities addresses persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and cognitive disabilities and their concerns in the areas of intimacy, family issues, sexuality, and sexual functioning. It offers suggestions for professionals who work with persons with these disabilities to help them work more competently with disabled persons in the sexuality arena. These concrete ideas are excellent for staff training and education and for enhancing professional development for those working with persons with physical disabilities.The contributing authors create an awareness that all people need individualized consideration and that the special needs of all individuals are important, especially for those who may have previously been left to discover things on their own--usually unsuccessfully. Sexuality and Disabilities focuses on a wide range of disabilities, including physical, developmental, and learning disabilities, mental retardation, and conditions that may have an impact on people later in life such as strokes, heart disease, or other chronic illness. Chapters discuss education and support issues for both practitioners and clients. Some of the topics examined include: components of a staff training program on sexuality and disability specific recommendations for sexuality education and counseling with people with spinal cord injuries and other acquired severe neurological disabilities a program model serving parents with mental retardation and their children specific ways educational programming, social work intervention, and policy efforts can address the special learning needs of people with cognitive impairments sources of support and stress for families caring for developmentally disabled children an analysis of special vulnerabilities and challenges relating to sexual victimization that confront people with disabilitiesAn extremely helpful tool for human service practitioners, Sexuality and Disabilities is also a valuable resource for graduate and undergraduate students who have an interest in working with people with physical, cognitive, or mental disabilities and helping them explore this basic facet of their lives.

Our book examines the role of three factors, God, Money, and Politics, in the epistemological theory of blindness, (the theory of the construction of knowledge on blindness and touch by social and cultural change). This book also illustrates this development has, in the main, been motivated by an attempt to assert or gain power and why the study of blindness in conventional academic subjects such as psychology, history and sociology is so important. We do this by presenting the main theories of disability and blindness that have informed the writing of this book, and a frame of reference for the historical story. Which places the book in the broad context of theories of disability and blindness, within an academic and symbolic context of physical impairment and the social mythologies that accompany such understanding.

In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a major transformation was occurring in many spheres of society: people with every sort of disability were increasingly being marginalized, excluded, and incarcerated. Disabled but still productive factory workers were being fired, and developmentally disabled individuals who had previously contributed domestic or agricultural labor in homes or on farms were being sent to institutions and poorhouses. In this book, Sarah F. Rose pinpoints the origins and ramifications of this sea change in American society, exploring the ways that public policy removed the disabled from the category of ""deserving"" recipients of public assistance, transforming them into a group requiring rehabilitation in order to achieve ""self-care"" and ""self-support."" By tracing the experiences of advocates, program innovators, and disabled people caught up in this epochal transition, Rose masterfully integrates disability history and labor history. She shows how disabled people and their families were relegated to poverty and second-class economic and social citizenship. This has vast consequences for debates about disability, poverty, and welfare in the century to come.

Practice Issues in Sexuality and Learning Disabilities explores the sexual behaviour of people with learning difficulties and addresses issues of concern such as sexual abuse, HIV and AIDS, service provision for those from ethnic minorities, the development of policy guidelines and the implementation of such guidelines in this intensely personal area. Ann Craft draws upon professional expertise from a broad range of backgrounds including social work, psychology, and medicine. She offers practical ideas and suggestions for service responses which acknowledge and respect the right of people with learning disabilities to express their sexuality in ways that are valued by other members of their society.
Practice Issues in Sexuality and Learning Disabilities will be of interest to all whose work or relationship brings them into contact with people with learning disabilities - professionals, carers, parents, advocates. It will be invaluable to social workers, practitioners in social work and health, trainees, training officers and voluntary organizations.

Individuals with disabilities are often "desexualized" in our society, yet they have the same need for intimacy, self-worth, and social belonging as people without disabilities. Sexuality and Disabilities addresses persons with physical, sensory, intellectual, and cognitive disabilities and their concerns in the areas of intimacy, family issues, sexuality, and sexual functioning. It offers suggestions for professionals who work with persons with these disabilities to help them work more competently with disabled persons in the sexuality arena. These concrete ideas are excellent for staff training and education and for enhancing professional development for those working with persons with physical disabilities.The contributing authors create an awareness that all people need individualized consideration and that the special needs of all individuals are important, especially for those who may have previously been left to discover things on their own--usually unsuccessfully. Sexuality and Disabilities focuses on a wide range of disabilities, including physical, developmental, and learning disabilities, mental retardation, and conditions that may have an impact on people later in life such as strokes, heart disease, or other chronic illness. Chapters discuss education and support issues for both practitioners and clients. Some of the topics examined include: components of a staff training program on sexuality and disability specific recommendations for sexuality education and counseling with people with spinal cord injuries and other acquired severe neurological disabilities a program model serving parents with mental retardation and their children specific ways educational programming, social work intervention, and policy efforts can address the special learning needs of people with cognitive impairments sources of support and stress for families caring for developmentally disabled children an analysis of special vulnerabilities and challenges relating to sexual victimization that confront people with disabilitiesAn extremely helpful tool for human service practitioners, Sexuality and Disabilities is also a valuable resource for graduate and undergraduate students who have an interest in working with people with physical, cognitive, or mental disabilities and helping them explore this basic facet of their lives.

This edited volume foregrounds Disability Critical Race Theory (DisCrit) as an intersectional framework that has informed scholarly analyses of racism and ableism from the personal to the global-offering important interventions into theory, practice, policy, and research. The authors offer deep personal explorations, innovative interventions aimed at transforming schools, communities, and research practices, and expansive engagements and global conversations around what it means for theory to travel beyond its original borders or concerns. The chapters in this book use DisCrit as a springboard for further thinking, illustrating its role in fostering transgressive, equity-based, and action-oriented scholarship. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal, Race Ethnicity and Education.

This book explores what happens to people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) when they reach adulthood. It provides an examination of various terms and definitions in use and a critical exploration of current UK policies. The author brings a wealth of many years' experience as a family carer, independent consultant and trainer to demonstrate the significant changes that a person-centred, specialised therapeutic and incremental approach can make to an individual's life. Advances in medical science mean more than ever, people with (PIMD) are growing into adulthood. What is this experience like for an adult who needs support in all aspects of their life? How do we include them in planning support when their intellectual disability means they cannot tell us first hand, what they want or need? Too often this group are overlooked or considered as an afterthought in policy and planning. Notions of independence, employment and mainstream inclusion are all problematic policy ideas for this group of people. Within one-size-fits-all service planning this focus means there is less capacity to meet their life-long specialist, complex and individualised needs. Understanding Profound and Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities in Adults is essential reading for anyone who is involved in the lives of adults with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities, whether as a researcher, student, carer or policy-maker.

Winner, Body and Embodiment Award presented by the American Sociological Association Imagine yourself without a face-the task seems impossible. The face is a core feature of our physical identity. Our face is how others identify us and how we think of our 'self'. Yet, human faces are also functionally essential as mechanisms for communication and as a means of eating, breathing, and seeing. For these reasons, facial disfigurement can endanger our fundamental notions of self and identity or even be life threatening, at worse. Precisely because it is so difficult to conceal our faces, the disfigured face compromises appearance, status, and, perhaps, our very way of being in the world. In Saving Face, sociologist Heather Laine Talley examines the cultural meaning and social significance of interventions aimed at repairing faces defined as disfigured. Using ethnography, participant-observation, content analysis, interviews, and autoethnography, Talley explores four sites in which a range of faces are "repaired:" face transplantation, facial feminization surgery, the reality show Extreme Makeover, and the international charitable organization Operation Smile,. Throughout, she considers how efforts focused on repair sometimes intensify the stigma associated with disfigurement. Drawing upon experiences volunteering at a camp for children with severe burns, Talley also considers alternative interventions and everyday practices that both challenge stigma and help those seen as disfigured negotiate outsider status. Talley delves into the promise and limits of facial surgery, continually examining how we might understand appearance as a facet of privilege and a dimension of inequality. Ultimately, she argues that facial work is not simply a conglomeration of reconstructive techniques aimed at the human face, but rather, that appearance interventions are increasingly treated as lifesaving work. Especially at a time when aesthetic technologies carrying greater risk are emerging and when discrimination based on appearance is rampant, this important book challenges us to think critically about how we see the human face.

This significant volume provides broad coverage of the spectrum of problems confronted by patients with developmental disabilities and the many kinds of occupational therapy services these individuals need. Experts identify exemplary institutional and community service programs for treating patients with autism, cerebral palsy, epilepsy, and mental retardation. A welcome contribution to the meager professional literature on the subject, Developmental Disabilities: A Handbook for Occupational Therapists will be an enormously helpful resource for therapists who work with both children and adults, ranging from mild to severe levels of impairment. You will learn how to establish a therapeutic environment for children with autism, develop a pre-vocational program in a pediatric skilled care facility, use qualitative research to obtain insight into the world of adults with significantly limiting cerebral palsy, and provide early intervention for your developmentally disabled patients.

In Matthew, Disability, and Stress: Examining Impaired Characters in the Context of Empire, Jillian D. Engelhardt examines four Matthean healing narratives, focusing on the impaired characters in the scenes. Her reading is informed by both empire studies and social stress theory, a method that explores how the stress inherent in social location can affect psychosomatic health. By examining the Roman imperial context in which common folk lived and worked, she argues that attention to social and somatic circumstances, which may have accompanied or caused the described disabilities/impairments, destabilizes readings of these stories that suggest the encounter with Jesus was straightforwardly good and the healing was permanent. Instead, Engelhardt proposes various new contexts for and offers more nuanced characterizations of the disabled/impaired people in each discussed scene, resulting in ambiguous interpretations that de-center Jesus and challenge able-bodied assumptions about embodiment, disability, and healing.

How does one investigate a child maltreatment case when the victim is blind, mute, deaf, mentally retarded, or confined to an institution? Special Children, Special Risks presents analysis, recommendations, and related research from social work, psychology, psychiatry, medicine, and education essential for establishing and maintaining safe environments for handicapped children.

This book brings together a diverse group of experts to pool their knowledge and share their concerns about the risks of abuse faced by handicapped children. The contributors' perspectives come from the fields of medicine, social work, developmental psychology, psychiatry, clinical psychology, education, child welfare, law, public policy, and journalism.