With its focus on Disability Equality Theory, the Medical & Social Model of disability, this programme gives participants an opportunity to think about how they may be able to tackle disability discrimination within their professional roles. Because Disability Equality promotes a community response, it is highly effective in helping teams to enable the fuller participation of whole communities thereby including disabled people. This session should help people understand of the specific character of disablism and the need for positive action. The session helps people consider small changes in operational activity such as removing the barriers in order to reduce marginalisation. The programme also helps people consider the broader systemic issues, giving participants an insight into the strategic imperatives linked to ethical commitment.

1. A Different Perspective on Disability
Laura (Mole) Chapman
Barnwood Trust

2. Welcome
“paid pests.” These are the scholars “whose function
it is to disrupt and intervene in conversations in
ways that are disturbing and force people to ask
why they frame the questions in the way they do
or why they make the analysis they do.”
Marshall, C. et al 2006, P.21

3. Ground Rules
What do you need to participate?

4. Shared Outcomes:
• Why is inclusive practice important
development to you?
• What do you want to learn?
• What are your hopes and fears?

5. Respectful Language?

6. Political
correctness made
us change the
words but not the
conversation.

7. Although I loathe the notion of
good manners, I do like the
notion of courtesy, and
therefore for me respect is
expressed through courtesy…
avoiding the assumptions
about another person and
keeping a certain distance
professionally

8. Dialogue
• Personal: inner, reflective, analytical, synthesizing. The way
issues are internalized. A process that makes sense. [Private
voice]
• Social: family and friends, deep, open, direct, love and
unconditional acceptance. [Personal voice]
• Professional dialogue: a closed ‘expert’ language - ‘jargon’ to
the outsider. The writer, the journalist and the professional
communicator… the questioning of technique and practice.
[Public voice]
• Learning dialogue: process of mentoring, coaching, and
tutoring. Enquiry, discovery, questioning, affirming. [Expert
voice]
• Community dialogue: process of debate and shared decision
taking. Trust, convention, shared understanding and protocol.
[Shared voice]
West-Burnham, J. 2009, pg 122

9. Disabilism
The disadvantage or restriction of activity
caused by contemporary social
organisation which takes little or no
account of people who have impairments
and thus excludes them from the
mainstream of social activities.

10. Articulating Disablism
Fred Brown (the person) is a man with
cerebral palsy (the impairment). When the
barriers and disablism (the oppression) that
restrict Fred have been removed from
society, Fred will no longer be disabled, but
he will still have cerebral palsy and be called
Fred.

11. Disabling Assumptions
The characteristics of disablism

12. Stereotypes of Disabled people
Myths and assumptions Professional reaction

13. I feel I act
Community Reaction

14. What do I need to belong?
[not fit in]

15. The Facts
• Visually impaired people are four times more likely to
be verbally and physically abused than sighted
people
• People with mental health issues are 11 times more
likely to be victimised
• 90% of adults with a learning difficulty report being
'bullied'.
Scope 2008

16. Compared with non-disabled people,
disabled people are:
• more likely to be economically inactive – only one in
two disabled people of working age are currently in
employment, compared with four out of five non-
disabled people;
• more likely to experience problems with hate crime
or harassment – a quarter of all disabled people say
that they have experienced hate crime or
harassment, and this number rises to 47% of people
with mental health conditions;

17. I think professionals
working with disabled
people should be
recognising why it’s
important that they listen
to what we’re asking...
that’s for me where I think
you start sharing power.
I think professionals
working with disabled
people should be
recognising why it’s
important that they listen
to what we’re asking...
that’s for me where I think
you start sharing power.

18. Visibility
on the experience of disability, history is
largely silent, and when it is discussed at all,
it is within the context of the history of
medical advances. Just as women and black
people have discovered that they must write
their own histories, so too with disabled
people.
Oliver and Campbell 1996

19. The Medical Model of disability
the personal domain
• Medical approach to the problem.
• Defined by non-disabled professionals
• Equated to illness in terms of research and
findings.
• Care and benefits have been awarded to
compensate for personal tragedy.

21. COMMUNITIES OF BELONGING

22. COMMUNITIES OF BELONGING
Locality
Disabled people
Schools
Toddler groups
Outsiders
Insiders
Hard to reach
Polish people
Pockets of deprivation

23. 23
Personal
Social
Professional
Community
Circles of friends / dialogue

24. Meaningful relationships
Our judgments about almost all social
interactions, organisations and
communities depend upon our
perceptions of the relationships
involved.
(Gelsthorpe & West-Burnham, 2003)

25. There is a community
aspect of saying “you are
in my community, you
may be quite distant, but
how can I involve you?
What can I do?”
There is a community
aspect of saying “you are
in my community, you
may be quite distant, but
how can I involve you?
What can I do?”

26. The Social Model of Disability
the public domain
• The problem owned by the whole community.
• It defines the problem in terms barriers:
attitudinal, structural and systemic.
• Acknowledges the oppression and a requirement
for action.
• It recognises disabled people’s voice in
distributed or shared leadership.

28. Critique of the Social Model
• No real argument to Medical Model/Social
Model distinction
• Non-disabled / disabled division is divisive
• Denies the experience of those
marginalised; those with learning
difficulties, mental health problems and
severe or acute pain.
Shakespeare, 2006, p. 77.28

29. Inclusive practice:
"Inclusion is a process of identifying and breaking down
barriers which can be environmental, attitudinal and
institutional. This process eliminates discrimination
thus providing all children and young people with
equal access to play.”
“Is an ongoing process of reviewing and developing
practice in order to adjust and celebrate diversity. It
is the journey not the destination!”

30. Principles of Inclusive Practice
• Equality
• Diversity
• Balance
• Fluidity
• Ethical Commitment
A Different Perspective on Equality pg 20

31. Personalisation
6 things that I value and take for
granted in my life?

32. Important
To me? For me?

34. Culture Change
Welcome
Tolerance
Single /other
Deficit
Barriers
Rigid rules
Compliance
Improvement
Invitation
Acceptance
Diverse
Assets
Boundaries
Flexible Values
Commitment
Transformation
Chapman, L, 2010, pg. 26

35. Positive and Possible
• Everyone can do something to contribute towards
greater fairness, while not everyone will do the
same thing in the same way.
• The challenge then is to accept that the change is
possible if people are able to appreciate a whole
diversity of positive actions.
• Rather than a step-by-step approach or a scale of
difficulty, an acceptance of diverse routes to a
more human experience.
Chapman, L. 2011 pg. 35

36. Co-Production
On a societal level, Co-Production entails
a simple but profound shift in
relationships... Co-Production may mean
the active process of remedying or
preventing whatever would violate our
sense of social justice. A social justice
perspective elevates the principle to an
Imperative’
Cahn, 2000, p 34-35

37. Social Justice
As stated by Prof. West-Burnham:
The principle of equality has to be reinforced and extended by the
practice of equity.
Equality: every human being has an absolute and equal right to common
dignity and parity of esteem and entitlement to access the benefits of
society on equal terms.
Equity: every human being has a right to benefit from the outcomes of
society on the basis of fairness and according to need.
Social justice: justice requires deliberate and specific intervention to
secure equality and equity.
Chapman, L. and West-Burnham, J. 2010, pg.26

38. Whose slice?
Inequality is best explained as a
powerful social force that generates
community divisions and oppression.
Inequality weakens community life,
reduces trust and increases violence
across populations.

39. Language & Dialogue
• A bridge between people.
• Words can hinder or empower.
• Links professional, personal, and private
conversations.
• Avoid ‘them’ and ‘us’.
• Validates experience: active and engaged
participants.

40. Growth and Capacity building

41. Learning and Development
We must put into practice our socially just
ideologies.
We must move from passive discourse and
involvement to conscious deliberate, and
proactive practice in educational leadership that
will produce socially just outcomes for all.
Marshall, C. et al, 2006, P.27

42. Good bye!
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