Synopses & Reviews
We live at a paradoxical time for many disabled people: some achieve new freedoms while others face cuts in services and attempts to restrict who counts as disabled. Locating disability policy within broader social policy contexts, Alan Roulstone and Simon Prideaux critically explore the roles of social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, spatial change, and other issues in shaping disabled peoples opportunities. They also consider implications for future policy developments, including the impact of changing government and academic understandings of disability.
Review
“Disability policy has changed dramatically over the last fifty years and especially so since the turn of 21st century. Roulstone and Prideaux have produced a comprehensive and accessible analysis of these changes that will prove to be an invaluable text for students, researchers and policy analysts across a range of disciplines: highly recommended.”--Colin Barnes, University of Leeds
Review
“This comprehensive and engaging book is a valuable addition to disability studies and to social policy more generally. It is essential reading for anyone concerned with either the legacy of social policy responses to the 'problem' of disability or in current debates about the future development of disability policy.”--Hannah Morgan, University of Lancaster
Review
“Roulstone and Prideaux have composed a beautiful book. It is engaging, accessible and meticulously written with a steady rhythm that invites the reader ... I have no hesitation in recommending this book. It’s easy to read, conceptually clear and logically mapped out.”
Review
“Understanding Disability Policy is a sophisticated and elegant book that engages with inherently complex and contested issues with conceptual clarity. . . . Roulstone and Prideaux have produced here an essential read for those from social work, disability studies, and all policy backgrounds.”
Review
“Sometimes after reading a book it seems incredible that it did not exist already. So it is with Understanding Disability Policy, a book that unusually provides a historically grounded yet up-to-date introduction to disability policy—rather than disability studies—that is accessible enough for the undergraduate student and rich enough to provoke thought among more established researchers.”
Synopsis
In an era of scarce social resources the question of the changing social policy constructions and responses to disabled people has become increasingly important. Paradoxically, some disabled people are realising new freedoms and choices never before envisioned, whilst others are prey to major retractions in public services and aggressive attempts to redefine who counts as 'genuinely disabled'. Understanding disability policy locates disability policy into broader social policy and welfare policy writings and goes beyond narrow statutory evaluations of welfare to embrace a range of indicators of disabled people's welfare. The book critically explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people's opportunities. It also situates welfare and disability policy in the broader conceptual shifts to the social model of disability and its critics. Finally it explores the possible connection between changing official and academic constructions of disability and their implications for social policy in the 21st century. The book is supported by a companion website, containing additional materials for both students and lecturers using the book, which is available from the link above.
Synopsis
Understanding disability policy explores the roles of social security, social support, poverty, socio-economic status, community safety, official discourses and spatial change in shaping disabled people's opportunities.
About the Author
Alan Roulstone is professor of applied social sciences at Northumbria University and an honorary professor at Swansea University.
Simon Prideaux is associate professor of social policy, disability, and crime at the University of Leeds.
Table of Contents
Detailed contents
List of boxes
List of acronyms
Acknowledgements
A note on the terminology
Introduction
1. Contextualising disability welfare policy
2. Cure, care and protect: the paternalist policy heritage
3. The rhetoric and reality of community care for disable people
4. Aiming high enough? Disabled children and mainstreamed lives
5. New Labour and clauses for conditionality: activating disabled citizens
6. Supporting disabled adults: new paradigms or new paternalism?
7. Older disabled people: choices and rights in old age?
8. Getting it right for all disabled people? The impact of disability policy on structured disadvantage
9. Out of the labyrinth? The disability benefits system unpacked
10. Coalition dreams, new conditionality and disability policy
References
Index