REIMAGINING DISABILITY SOCIAL POLICY WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN

REIMAGINING DISABILITY SOCIAL POLICY – WHAT NEEDS TO HAPPEN? Dr Miro Griffiths, University of Leeds

Miro Griffiths • • • Teaching Fellow in Disability Studies (Disability Theory, Research Methods, Social Policy Analysis, and Education Studies) and Secretary of the Centre for Disability Studies at University of Leeds Areas of interest: Disability Studies; Disability Policy; Resistance Movements; Activism and Social Movements; Youth Participation; Political Sociology; Inclusive Play (including accessible gaming); Assistive Technology Adviser to: • • UK Equality and Human Rights Commission, UK Government, European Commission, Liverpool City Region Fairness and Social Justice Advisory Board, British Council European Network on Independent Living, Da. Fest, Alliance for Inclusive Education

What I will discuss… Key Point – Prioritise Micro‐Level Activity Key Point – Establish Collective Resistance Key Point – Future of Disabled People’s Organisation Importance of social model of disability and understanding power in a relational capacity

Context There are repeated claims that opportunities to progress disabled people's rights is in jeopardy due to the political and economic objectives of States (Hauben et al. 2012). • The continuation of austerity measures within Europe provides an example of disabled people and their families struggling to receive the right level of support to meet health, social care, and education needs (Horridge et al. 2019). • Similarly, the majority of disabled people in the global South struggle against oppression perpetuated by poverty, inaccessible environments and the consequences of historical and contemporary violent colonial action (Grech 2016). •

UNCRPD Article 19 – Living independently and being included in the community States Parties to the present Convention recognize the equal right of all persons with disabilities to live in the community, with choices equal to others, and shall take effective and appropriate measures to facilitate full enjoyment by persons with disabilities of this right and their full inclusion and participation in the community… Article 33 – National implementation and monitoring 3. Civil society, in particular persons with disabilities and their representative organizations, shall be involved and participate fully in the monitoring process.

Review of Variations in Disability Assessments across Europe • • • Waddington, Priestley, and Sainsbury (2019) highlight five key points: First, assessment methods can centre upon a medical diagnosis with emphasis placed upon the individual's health conditions and impairments. Second, they can be context‐based. Focusing on functional capacity, the assessment explores an individual's needs within different contexts (employment, self‐care, economic hardship). Third, assessments incorporate and combine different procedures to identify and provision support. Fourth, there remains procedural differences across the assessment approaches. This is in the case of how evidence is collected and the role of medical professionals and assessment teams. Finally, there is a necessity to consider how closely aligned state assessment procedures are to the UNCRPD aspirations.

Role of Disabled People’s Movements? Focus on developing a sense of pride and to identify commonality with and differences between fellow members Recognition of political and economic contributions to marginalisation Making advances in or defending existing rights Focus on campaigning; identify key allies to lobby

Six Lessons from History • • • Professor Mike Oliver speaking at 2013 London Launch of UK Disability History Month: ‘the history of creating a strong and powerful Disabled People’s Movement’ ‘recognising the so‐called allies of the Movement, who hijack ideas and turn it into their agendas’ ‘reflecting on ‘the original definitions of the Independent Living principles’ ‘fakes who seek to jump on the Independent Living bandwagon’ ‘honour the many who never escape the isolation or those who died on the journey’ ‘not to collude with the attempts of government to falsify the demands of the DPM’

Key Point – Prioritise Micro‐Level Activity • • • Disabled people and their organisations must document and analyse how, at the micro‐level, current social policy practice is restricting disabled people's participation within society. This also requires consideration of how and why disabled people resist current ideas and practices that render disabled people in exploitative, marginalised, and unjust social positions. Consider: (Priestley, Waddington and Bessozi 2010) barriers to effective collaboration with academics, as perceived by disabled people’s organisations, are: • • (a) a lack of understanding in universities about the research needs and priorities of civil society; b) a history of unequal power relationships in which disabled people have been engaged primarily as ‘subjects’ or ‘objects’ of research rather than as equal partners.

The Importance of Micro‐Level Activity Personal biographies are windows to social, historical and cultural change in Britain (C Wright Mills, Sociological Imagination) …Biography becomes more than simply individual when it provides us with a window on the social world, or when it provides ‘traces’ of wider social relations and macro social change. (Priestley, 2003)

Defining a Public Problem Knoepfel, Peter, Larrue, Corinne, Varone, Frédéric, & Hill, Michael. (2011). Public policy analysis: Policy Press.

Key Point – Establish Collective Resistance • By focusing at the micro‐level there is opportunity to create a collective resistance and action to understand the prevalence of oppression and marginalisation within society. • Going beyond the parameters of singular identity characteristics, it as possible to engage with an intersectional approach to understand how society is currently inaccessible for numerous, diverse communities. • Through an analysis of disability, ableist and normative values within current social policy practice can be scrutinised. This injects the possibility for imagining alternative possibilities for how society should be organised.

Importance of Intersectional Thought • Ghai (2012) and bell hooks (1995) • Need to recognise that we consciously or unconsciously oppress each other. • Through the creation/establishment of intersections, we attack social aparthe which places limits on human beings, (both disabled and non‐disabled). • Crenshaw (1989) • We exist at multiple intersections of our fragmented legal selves • Relevance for policy practice and activism…

A Form of Resistance that Challenges the Extent of Ableism • • As articulated by Campbell (2009, p. 44) is: A “network of beliefs, processes and practices that produces a particular kind of self and body (the corporeal standard) that is projected as the perfect, species‐typical and therefore essential and fully human. ” Disability, understood as the extensive and continuous discriminative practices against disabled people, is reinforced due to the troubling notion of “normality” inherent within the social, political, economic, and cultural structures within society. Thus ableism seeks to unpack the “networks of association that produce exclusionary categories and ontologies. ” (Campbell 2009, p. 20).

Understanding Activism through ‘Interesting Operations’ • • Beckett & Campbell (2015) allowing identification of injustice; harnessing and orientating practices of resistance; allowing formation of counter‐rationalities; facilitating analysis; allowing establishment of a social movement’s vocabulary; providing a framework of agreed values; allowing members of social movements to act strategically and as one.

Key Point – Future of Disabled People’s Organisations • To ensure sustainability and the effectiveness of the two key points outlined, there is a need to reflect on the current operations of disabled people's organisations. • This means analysing how organisations are structured, the process in which priorities are set and campaigns are organised.

Disabled People’s Organisations – Issues to Consider • • • Commitment to progressive change could lead it to becoming insular and focused on short‐term, crisis‐driven agendas (Sheldon 2009) Groups become too integrated into the structures of state power for it to be able to contribute to a radical change aimed at improving the quality of life and social inclusion of disabled people (Mladenov 2010) Professionalisation of parts of disabled people’s movement and integration with the state and service providers (Oliver and Barnes, 2006).

Different Approaches to Enact Change (Mladenov 2010)

What Sort of Relationship is Needed? Oliver’s and Zarb’s (1989, 235) that: …must develop a relationship with the State so that it can secure proper resources and play a role in changing social policy and professional practice. On the other hand, it must remain independent of the State to ensure that the changes that take place do not ultimately reflect the establishment view and reproduce paternalistic and dependency‐creating services, but are based upon changing and dynamic conceptions of disability as articulated by disabled people themselves.

Where To? Need to facilitate resistance practices on the part of disabled people. To do this we need to consider: 1) Making visible the barriers that exclude and restrict disabled people from receiving many of the benefits of full citizenship. 2) Second, operating heterotopically (Foucault 1986), opening up a horizon, making visible a different, non‐disabling world in the fabric of the present. The specific common is through establishing space to imagine an inclusive and enabling society – one that can be continually activated to relativize the present and therefore has practical import and impact in changing the present.

Further Discussion? Miro Griffiths MBE BSc (Hons), MA, Ph. D, AFHEA Teaching Fellow in Disability Studies School of Sociology and Social Policy Address – School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Leeds, LS 2 9 JT, United Kingdom Telephone – 0044 7835 413 238 Email ‐ M. Griffiths 1@leeds. ac. uk Profile: https: //essl. leeds. ac. uk/sociology/staff/1040/miro‐griffiths