Conceptual Models |
Disabilities Myths and Realities |
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Moral Model |
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| This model views disabilitiy as linked to sin and evil. (Mackelprang and Salsgiver, 1999) While this view | Myth: Disability in one area of functioningimplies disability in another area Reality: Disability in onearea, such as phsycial disability, does not meanthat a person has otherdisabilities, such asmental impairment |
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| was popular during through the Middle Ages, there is evidence of its existence today. Some may point | ||
| to biblical references, believing that disabilitiy is a "punishment from God" for the immoral acts of their | ||
| parents. This view perpetuates discrimination. | ||
| Medical Model | ||
| This model views disability as a biological (pathological) condition. The disability is located within the | ||
| person (not caused by the enviornment). This view perpetuates the concept of the person with a disability | ||
| as "sick" and dependent on medical services. | ||
| Social Role Valorization | ||
| Social Role Valorization (SRV) is described as "a high level and systematic schema, based on social role | ||
| theory, for addressing the plight of people who are devalued by others, and especially by major sectors | ||
| of their society" (Wolfensberger, 2000). The roots of SRV can be found in normalization concepts. | ||
| Since people with disabilities are included as a population found to be devalued by society, SRV is applied | ||
| to "upgrade the perceived value of the roles sych persons already occupy, and/or to extricate such persons | ||
| from devalued roles" (Wolfensberger, 2000). | ||
| Social Role Valorization holds that certain groups of people experience social discrimination and prejudice | ||
| which leads to nagtive life experiences. Groups vulnerable to social discrimination include people with | ||
| disabilities and/or body characteristics negatively perceived by society, people who exhibit atypical behavior, | ||
| people who live below the poverty line, and people who do not have skills that are valued by society. | ||
| Negative life experiences include rejection or ridicule, stigmatization, segregation, limited choices, | ||
| dehuminazation, loss of individual identity, and poverty. These individuals are more likely to be placed in | ||
| segregated settings engaging in unconstructive activities. Social role valorization seeks to support valued | ||
| roles for people with disabilities and eliminate stereotypes and other negative life experiences. Examples | ||
| include assuring that people engage in age-appropriate, constructive activities; moving away from the view | ||
| of people with disabilities as medically fragile or sick; treating people with dignity and respect and not as | ||
| objects, cases, or targets of ridicule; and eliminating the view of poeple with disabilities as menaces. | ||
Social/Minority Model |
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| This model includes the social constructionist view discrimination view, and independent living movement. | ||
| (Macelprang & Salsgiver, 1999) The view is that disabilitiy is created by societal definition rather than by a | ||
| particular condition. The independent living movement emphasizes competence, self-respect, equality, | ||
| and self-determination. | ||
| The Disability Discrimination Model |
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| by Gary May | ||
| The Disabilitiy Discrimination Model is designed to give progessional social workers a way to conceptualize | ||
| disability so that their work can play a role in the transformation of how people with disabilities are treated | ||
| in our society. The guiding principle of this text is that disability-related impairment is a social construction | ||
| rather than an immutable, objective reality. Impairment operates as a set of beliefs supported by theories | ||
| and practices within socety so that deviations from normative expectations in physical and biological | ||
| construction are defined as limiting and excluding. The Disability Discrimination Model proposes | ||
| atheoretical model along with a set of practice principles upon which social workers can restructure their | ||
| practices. | ||
| The Disability Discrimination Model necessitates acceptance of an understanding of disability where | ||
| "disability" and "impairment" are not inherently linked. This theory asserts that the concepts of disability | ||
| and impairment are socially constructed, and that the "facts" concerning the consequences of disabilitiy are | ||
| not immutable, objective realities, but merely affirmations or a pejorative and stereotypic perspective. | ||
| Pfeiffer (JDPS 2000) has stated that "In a flexible social sustem which fully accomodates a person with a | ||
| disability, the disability disabppears." This view precludes the simultaneous existence of a disability, | ||
| which may be defines as the presence of an appearance or functional characteristic that is a departure from | ||
| normative expectations, and positive connotations that might be associeated with the label "disabled" By so | ||
| doing, this perspective implicitly validates the traditional medical model where a disability is a negative | ||
| aberration that becomes the focus of preventive or remedial intervention. | ||
| The Disability Discrimination Model contends that being labeled "disabled" is no different from being | ||
| labeled "female," "African American", "Hispanic" or any other nominal distinction, but for the consequences | ||
| of the label. Historically people with disabilites, unlike these other groups, have not been socialized to | ||
| experience pride pride and postive connotation with the label "disabiled". We believe that proud, positive | ||
| connotations can and do accompany the label "disabled" except under conditions where the consequences of | ||
| the label areconstructed as negative, limiting, and pejorative. Consequently, the fact that I have bilateral | ||
| above the knee amputations (deviation from appearance and functional norms) does not mean that I cannot | ||
| be proud of my total being including that portion of my body and functionality that is appropriately labeled | ||
| "disabled". | ||
| As Pfeiffer (2000) suggests, a hospitable environment that accomodates my appearance and functional | ||
| deviations (read disability), is desirable, but the asbence of such an accomodating environment does | ||
| not mean that I move from a non-disabled state to a disabled state. The absence of such necessary and | ||
| desirable accommodations merely suggests that the socially constructed environment causes impairment. I | ||
| may still proudly mantain the label "disabled" in either instance. | ||
| In the prevously cited examples of women, African Americans, Hispanics, and others, we do not insist | ||
| that relinquish identity or proud adherence to the labels that connote their group's deviation from the | ||
| ordinary. Nor do we suggest that they no longer occupy a role and status within their labeled group if they | ||
| experiencean accomodating social system. Indeed, great effort is expended to insure that everyone | ||
| understands thevalue of diversity (read deviation) in contemporary U.S. culture. Not so when disabilitiy is | ||
| the issue. Here,the focus is on restoring the person labeled disabled so they no longer deviate from | ||
| normative expectations. There is no systematic effort to identify sources of pride or to instill positive | ||
| connotations on being"disabled". | ||
| The implications for social workers and other intentional helpers are profound and requrie a "working | ||
| with "orientation with the disabled client v.a. "working on" orientation. From this working with perspective, | ||
| the client sustem is not merely the collection of difficulties or clinical sumptomatology, but is one | ||
| component of an interactive sustem that may produce impairment. Solutions, then, are not to be found | ||
| solely in the person with the disability, but in the larder social environment. | ||
| Decisions about what needs to be done and who should do it are reached through collaboration and | ||
| consultation not merely clinical practice or psychotherapy. The Disability Discrimnation Model asserts that | ||
| the "client" system is victimized by poor quality social interaction, not by their personality or behavioral | ||
| characteristics. | ||
| The Disability Discrimination Model makes an essential distinction betweem disability and impairment and | ||
| views impairment as a socialy constructed phenomenon. From this perspective, disability becomes disabling, | ||
| or impairment, where an observed or perceived atypical appearance or functional characteristic intersects | ||
| with a negative, stereotypic, limiting expectation set. Typically, the possessors of the atypical appearance | ||
| or functional characteristics are labeled "disabled", and the holders of the negative, steroptic, limiting | ||
| expectations are labeled "non-disabled". Such a depiction allows the person witha dsiability to continue to | ||
| "own" and even celebrate the disability, and implicitly, membership in the disability culture and explains | ||
| deferential treatment, and limiting elements of the social and physical environment. | ||
| Interventions are enacted in a broader field and necessarily include the important human elements of the | ||
| client's experience. These other important human elements will need to be education about the importance | ||
| that they have in the quality of life of the client. Resistance to this novel perspective is likely, as the | ||
| influence of the traditional victim blaming perspective is substantial. | ||
| Explanatory Legitimacy Theory | ||
| In their book, Rethinking Disbility (Brooks/Cole, 2004), Depoy and Gilson define disability as a contextually | ||
| embedded, dynamic grand category of human diversity. Thus, who belongs and what responses are | ||
| afforded to category members are based on differential, changing, and sometimes conflicting judgments | ||
| about the value of explanations for diverse human phonomena. This apprach to defininf disability differs | ||
| from previous schemes in which disability was determined by the presence of a medical condition that | ||
| caused permanent limitations in one's daily function. Explanatory legitimacy theory makes the distinctions | ||
| among descriptive, explanatory and the axiological or the legitimacy dimensions of the categorization of | ||
| human diversity and identifies the relationships among these elements. Thus, disability analyzed through the | ||
| lens of explanatory legitimacy is comprised of the three interactive elements: description, explanation, and | ||
| legitimacy, is comprised of the three interactive elements: description, explanation, and legitimacy. | ||
| Description emphasizes the full range of human activity (what people do and do not do and how they do | ||
| what they do), appearance, and experience and is comprised on two intersecting dimensions (typical/atypical | ||
| and observable/reportable). Typical involves activity, appearance, and experience as most frequently | ||
| ocurring and expected in a specified context. Atypical referes to activity, appearnace, and experience outside | ||
| of what is considered to be typical. | ||
| Oberservable phenomena are activities and appearance which fall under the rubric of thouse which can be | ||
| sensed and agreed upon. Reportable phenomena are experiences which can be known through inference | ||
| only. | ||
| To illustrate the two axes, the use of wheeled device for mobility would be observable and atypical for | ||
| young adults, but would be observable and typical for infants. Pain would be reportable sicne it can not be | ||
| directly observed and verified. | ||
| Explanation is the set of reasons for atypical doing, appearance, and experience. Explanation provides the | ||
| basis on which one judges eligibility for category membership. For example, "homeless" is a description of | ||
| one's living situation and may have many explanations. However, it the explanation is drug addiction, the | ||
| response may be difference than if the explanation is the experience of abuse and oppression or even if | ||
| the explanation is the experience is Hurricane Katrina. Relative to disability, Depoy and Gilson look at | ||
| medical-diagnostic explanations and constructed explanations. Medical explanations view descriptive atypical | ||
| phenomenon from a pathology perspective. This explanatory model, locating the explanation within an | ||
| individual, might beget treatment and rehavilitation as a response. Constructed explanations identify | ||
| the explanation for atypical description as a set of limitations imposed in inidividuals (with or even without | ||
| diagnosed medical conditions) from external factors such as social cultural, economic, political, and other | ||
| environmental influences. | ||
| The target for change from this explanatory perspective is the social environment since the disabling | ||
| factors are not seen as located within individuals. From a constructed perspective, concepts of self- | ||
| determination, inclusion, power, and justice become important. The authors note that "one may be | ||
| disabled by a legitimatemedical-diagnostic, social barrier, or political powerless explanation." | ||
| Legitimacy is defined as "the set of differential judgments that place explanations for atypicality within or | ||
| outisde of disability status". "Disability is determined not by the explanation but by the set of beliefs, value | ||
| judgments, and expectations attributed to the explanation." Legitimacy can come from outside the individual | ||
| in such forms as medical, legal and policy determinations that one is a member of the disability category. | ||
| This type of legitimate membership on the category of disability may determine one's eligibility for | ||
| treatment, medical benefits, protection under non discriminationlaws or eligibility for various programs and | ||
| services. Determinations for "eligibiliy" for the death penalty and rationales for abortion or assisted suicides | ||
| are effected by value judgments related to disability. Legitimacy can also come from within - how one | ||
| identifies oneself. Related to this explanation are self-determination, and disability studies. | ||
| Explanatory Legitimacy Theory can be applied to professional practice, social change, and social justice. | ||
| The authors emphasize that "the primary purpose of professional activity should be the improvemnet | ||
| of experience and social justice within the diversity of people and communities. | ||
References |
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| Depoy, E. & Gilson, S. (2004). Rethinking Disability. Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. | ||
| Mackelprang & Salsgiver, R. (1999). Disability: A Diversity Model Approach in Human Service Practice. | ||
| Belmont, CA: Brooks/Cole. | ||
| May, G. & Raske, M., (2005). Ending Disability Discrimination. Boston: Pearson. | ||
| Wolfensburger, W. (2000). A brief overview of social role valorization. Mental Retardation. (38, 2), | ||
| 105-123. | ||
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