What Is The Social Relational Model Of Disability

The Models Of Disability

Biomedical Model of Health

The biomedical model of health is the most dominant in the western world and focuses on health purely in terms of biological factors. Contained within the biomedical model of health is a medical model of disability. In a similar vein, this focuses on disability purely in terms of the impairment that it gives the individual. The biomedical model is often contrasted with the biop-sychosocial model.

Clipart image of an empty wheelchair in the foreground with colored silhouettes of people to the left and right of the wheelchair. A world map is featured in the background.

Medical Model of Disability

The medical model of disability is presented as viewing disability as a problem of the person, directly caused by disease, trauma, or other health condition which therefore requires sustained medical care provided in the form of individual treatment by professionals.

• In the medical model, management of the disability is aimed at a “cure,” or the individual’s adjustment and behavioral change that would lead to an “almost-cure” or effective cure.
• In the medical model, medical care is viewed as the main issue, and at the political level, the principal response is that of modifying or reforming health-care policy.

Identity Model

Disability as an identity model is closely related to the social model of disability – yet with a fundamental difference in emphasis – is the identity model of disability.

Social Model of Disability

Minority Model of Disability

Americans With Disabilities Act

This Act provides a broader definition of disability hence covers a broader set of individuals with disabilities. According to the Act, disability is considered to be any physical or mental impairment that significantly limits an individual or individuals key life activity, a verification of such an impairment, or being considered as having such an impairment. To this effect, Title I of the Act obliges employers to make reasonable considerations to employees with disabilities except where such accommodations would cause unwarranted hardship on the normal operation of business.

Effects Of The Medical Model Of Disability

One result of the common medical understanding of disability is that people with disabilities often report feeling excluded, undervalued, pressured to fit a questionable norm, and/or treated as if they were globally incapacitated. People with disabilities often express frustration when they are met with pitying attitudes or incredulity if they speak about anything positive related to living with their conditions. Many memoirs and books now attest to this common experience . For many people with disabilities, the main disadvantage they experience does not stem directly from their bodies, but rather from their unwelcome reception in the world, in terms of how physical structures, institutional norms, and social attitudes exclude and/or denigrate them. As Lois Keith remarks, Doing disability all day long can be an exhausting process. I dont mean having an impairment, in my own case not being able to walk. Like most disabled people I can deal with this. I mean having to spend a significant part of each day dealing with a physical world which is historically designed to exclude me and, even more tiring, dealing with other peoples preconceptions and misconceptions about me.

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The Social Model Of Disability In Medical Practice

So how might a medical professional appropriately integrate the social model of disability into practice, particularly in relation to disorders that are often chronic in nature? Several scholars have articulated important aspects of this integration . Two additional points are worth exploring here. First, we must ensure that medical professionals talk candidly about negative impairment effects while maintaining full respect for individuals with disabilities and fighting for disability justice, for full inclusion of people with disabilities in society. Second, perhaps, we should think more openly about how we understand the place of chronic illness in the disability/impairment distinction.

Handout : Table Comparing Medical Model And Social Model With Examples In Schools

Chapter on the social model of disability in The Disability Studies Reader

Further information on the social model and barriers to inclusion in society

Short video on the social model with Auslan produced by People with Disability Australia

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Law And Public Policy

In the United Kingdom, the Disability Discrimination Act defines disability using the medical model – disabled people are defined as people with certain conditions, or certain limitations on their ability to carry out “normal day-to-day activities.” But the requirement of employers and service providers to make “reasonable adjustments” to their policies or practices, or physical aspects of their premises, follows the social model. By making adjustments, employers and service providers are removing the barriers that disable – according to the social model, they are effectively removing the person’s disability. In 2006, amendments to the act called for local authorities and others to actively promote disability equality. This enforcement came in the shape of the Disability Equality Duty in December 2006. In 2010, The Disability Discrimination Act was amalgamated into the Equality Act 2010 along with other pertinent discrimination legislation. It extends the law on discrimination to indirect discrimination. For example, if a carer of a person with a disability is discriminated against, this is now also unlawful. Since October 2010, when it came into effect, employers may not legally ask questions about illness or disability at interview for a job or for a referee to comment on such in a reference, except where there is a need to make reasonable adjustments for an interview to proceed. Following an offer of a job, an employer can lawfully ask such questions.

The Social Model Of Disability

A simplified picture of a part of the real world. It has some of the characteristics of the real world but not all of them. It is a set of interrelated guesses about the world. Like all pictures a model is simpler than the phenomena it is supposed to represent or explain.

Using Lave and Gardner’s definition of a model, the Nordic social relative model of disability is the closest of the three discussed above to what may be termed a model because it proposes concepts and relationships between the individual and their environment and some mechanism of exchange or interaction.

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Models Of Disability: Types And Definitions

Synopsis: Lists the scholarly defined different models of disability and also provides explanations on each of the various current models in society today. The spectrum model refers to the range of visibility, audibility and sensibility under which mankind functions. The model asserts that disability does not necessarily mean reduced spectrum of operations. Disability rights movements, activists, scholars, and practitioners construct debates around the two main models, social and medical, of understanding of disabilities.

Critique Of The Social Model

Despite the important impact the social model has had, recently this way of understanding disability has also been critiqued. First, it has been criticized as ignoring the cultural and experiential dimensions of disability. For example, with the emphasis on the removal of social barriers, matters like athletic identity, emotional regulation, stories of mental coping strategies, or psychological well-being are passed over.

Second, it is argued that the idea of a barrier-free world is constrained by the natural environment, is at times economically impractical and is not possible for all people with disability. Moreover, by accommodating some impairments, barriers may then be put in place for other bodies. For example, wheelchair users can find curb cuts useful to enable their movement through the built environment. However, blind people might find that the same curb cuts make it difficult for them to differentiate pavement from road, and leave them walking into the path of a vehicle. Wheeling their way to play in a local tennis tournament, wheelchair users might have difficulties with tactile paving, which gives locational cues to people with visual impairments.

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Arendt Plurality And Power

Hannah Arendt argues that there are three realms to social life âpolitical, social and privateâ . One suggestion is that keeping the social and political distinct and in their place is problematic because it may serve to legitimise material inequality . For example, disability, unlike gender or race, is generally not considered to be a relation of social power in which everyone is implicated. Using Arendt’s three realms means that we have the potential to engage with an intersectional and politically informed position to analyse disability and impairment. In sociology, there is a renewed focus on the private as the significance of the public realm increases, and awareness that there is a mutuality of the private and public with one constituting the other by a set of powerful discourses . In contrast, the social model of disability appears to focus mainly on the political and touches on the social but pays little or no attention to the private, synonymous with its Marxist underpinnings.

Narrative Inquiry And Narrative Analysis

Understandings of disability are shaped by the model a sport and exercise psychologist adopts. But in addition, the type of theoretical approach adopted also underpins and informs work within sport and exercise psychology on disability. One approach that is garnering interest within sport and exercise psychology disability research is narrative inquiry. The core premise of this approach is that a person is essentially a storytelling animal stories structure our experiences. We make meaning or sense of things through storytelling, and stories act on and in us, often working to shape and inform human behavior. Such a narrative approach is, therefore, of some relevance to sport and exercise psychologists who as professionals are in the business of dealing with experience, meaning, and human behavior. In both applied practice and for research purposes, we often ask athletes with disabilities to share with us their personal accounts of key moments or phases in their career.

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Conceptual Models Of Disability

While there are many models of disability, two categories stand at the ends of a spectrum the individual or medical model where disability is seen as an attribute of an individual health condition, and the social model, where disability is a product of environment 5. A third category includes models in which disability is the result of the individual-environment interaction.2,6 Over the past few decades, newer models have evolved, that often incorporate the biopsychosocial model with other models and theories.

A) Medical Models of Disability

Medical models of disability equate pathology with inherent disability. For example, a person with hearing loss is considered disabled, just as a person with cancer is considered disabled. In these models, the disability is viewed as a defect that the field of medicine and healthcare professionals must fix. This implies that disabilities and disablement can be cured by medicine. A solely medical model of disability consequently leads to any individual with pathology, however severe it may be, qualifying for social aid and accommodations regardless of level of function. This resulted in the stigmatization, impoverishment, and institutionalization of many individuals with pathologies.6 Examples include the Nagi Model.

B) Social Models of Disability

C) Biopsychosocial Models of Disability

D) Other models of disability

Disability And The Right To Full Human Development

All reasonable advances to attaining the full participation of individuals with disabilities incorporate doing away with all the socially constructed obstacles to achieving human potential. These obstacles may take various settings that include environmental, political or psychological constructions. They may also be educational in nature, institutional and social.

Doing away with these barriers provides the people with disabilities with access to the fundamental conditions needed to operate as independent and responsible people. These essential conditions include education, housing, working conditions, impartial and fair remuneration for work, justice, impartiality and the chance to be involved in civic and other socio-cultural aspects in day-to-day life. This has been documented as a proper way of ensuring socio-economic security and social inclusion of the individuals with disabilities.

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A Social Relational Model Of Disability: A Theoretical Framework For Special Needs Education

• Sociology
• European Journal of Special Needs Education

• Psychology
• 2009

• View 6 excerpts, cites background

• Psychology
• 2017

• View 4 excerpts, cites background

• Studies in Philosophy and Education
• 2021

• View 2 excerpts, cites background

• Sociology, Psychology
• 2016

• View 1 excerpt, cites background

• Disability & Society
• 2019

• View 1 excerpt, cites background

• Psychology
• 2016

• Sociology
• 2016

• View 19 excerpts, cites background and methods

• Psychology
• 2016

• View 2 excerpts, cites background

• 2015

The Sociology Of Power

During the late 20th century, âpower as a phenomenon has become a matter of theoretical contentionâ and through the processes of post modernisation and globalisation there have been shifts in contexts, and transitions in thinking . In the existing sociological analysis of power there are different theoretical perspectives, which may thematically be characterised as Marxist, pluralist and elitist. We can also argue that sociology as a discipline has been organised to privilege the public realm and there has been an under theorisation of the private in sociological thought which has implications for power.

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Tool For Cultural Analysis

The social model has become a key tool in the analysis of the cultural representation of disability from literature, to radio, to charity-imagery to cinema. The social model has become the key conceptual analysis in challenging, for examples, stereotypes and archetypes of disabled people by revealing how conventional imagery reinforces the oppression of disabled people. Key theorists include Paul Darke , Lois Keith , Leonard Davis , Jenny Sealey and Mary-Pat O’Malley .

Social Model Of Disability

The social model of disability identifies systemic barriers, derogatory attitudes, and social exclusion , which make it difficult or impossible for individuals with impairments to attain their valued functionings. The social model of disability diverges from the dominant medical model of disability, which is a functional analysis of the body as a machine to be fixed in order to conform with normative values. While physical, sensory, intellectual, or psychological variations may cause individual functional limitation or impairments, these do not necessarily have to lead to disability unless society fails to take account of and include people regardless of their individual differences.

The social model of disability is based on a distinction between the terms impairment and disability. In this model, the word impairment is used to refer to the actual attributes that affect a person, such as the inability to walk or breathe independently. The word disability is used to refer to the restrictions caused by society when it does not give equivalent attention and accommodation to the needs of individuals with impairments.

The origins of the approach can be traced to the 1960s, and the specific term emerged from the United Kingdom in the 1980s. According to Mike Oliver, the social model of disability was never meant to be an all-encompassing explanation of everything that a disabled person experiences.

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The Routledge Handbook Of Social Work Theory

Print publication date: July 2019Online publication date: June 2019

Print ISBN: 9780415793438

Abstract

This chapter presents a summary of disability theory with reference to social work practice. We consider five models of disability, of which we advocate that three are essential for social work practice to support disabled service users. We discuss two medical models and three versions of the social model with reference to their theoretical origins. The chapter will suggest that the biomedical models employ an essentialist perspective to disability and impairment , whereas the social models draw on historical materialism, critical realism and post-structuralism philosophies. We use examples from our research to illustrate how these theoretical lenses emerge and can be applied in different situational professional spaces.

Exploring The Critiques Of The Social Model Of Disability: The Transformative Possibility Of Arendt’s Notion Of Power

Academic Unit of Dental Public Health, University of Sheffield

Address for correspondence: Janine Owens, Academic Unit of Dental Public Health, School of Clinical Dentistry Claremont Crescent, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TA. E-mail

Academic Unit of Dental Public Health, University of Sheffield

Address for correspondence: Janine Owens, Academic Unit of Dental Public Health, School of Clinical Dentistry Claremont Crescent, University of Sheffield, Sheffield S10 2TA. E-mail

• Wechat

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Recognizing Impairment Effects Without Sanctioning Disabling Practices

Discussion of the negative effects of impairment was, for a long time, excluded from disability rights writing, in large part because of the worry that acknowledging such realities would undermine the important work of addressing disability oppression and discrimination. The gains made by the disability rights movement are still fragile and partial . Given the pervasiveness and depth of belief in the medical model, people with disabilities may hesitate to acknowledge publicly any difficulties they experience. Jenny Morris expresses the worry this way: For many this feels a very dangerous thing to say, in that we feel it makes us vulnerable to non-disabled people turning round and saying there you are then, we always knew that your lives were awful because of illness or incapacity, we always knew what a tragedy it is. . As a consequence, concerns about the negative side of impairment are sometimes discussed among people with disabilities privately, but rarely voiced in the public realm.

The social model reminds us to be careful about what we presume to be irremediable through social change and to question the ways in which we currently understand disability. Challenging standard definitions of disability and impairment will require listening carefully to the experiences of people living with those impairments and thinking creatively about possibilities for inclusion, accommodation, and accessibility.