A model for equality

While the Social Model must still stand, argues Andy Rickell, it, and the people who advocate and proselytise for it need to recognise the place that impairments have in defining us as disabled

Whilst on holiday, I took the opportunity to read Tom Shakespeare’s Disability Rights and Wrongs, which I had put off reading for over a year. Given that Tom argues that the social model of disability is “wrong”, his views are about as different to mine as it is possible to get, but I found it helpful to my own understanding to consider an opponent’s thoughts.

I am never going to apostatize the social model. It clearly offers a radical view of disability which speaks a real truth about disabled people’s experiences. It challenges conventional negative thinking, was developed by disabled people and is owned by us, empowers disabled individuals about themselves and as social change activists, and offers a clear programme for improving disabled people’s position in society through social and political change. And I have always been a strong advocate for the social model and the related issues of disabled people’s equality and human rights.

Tom, though, has helped social model activists to remind ourselves that whilst the social model is about emphasising barriers, exclusion, the social construction of disability and the need for societal change, that we never said that impairment is not an issue at all. What we have said is that disability is fundamentally about society’s reaction to impairment, not impairment itself. But even if equality and inclusion and independent living were achieved, there would remain a residual disadvantage to some individuals associated with impairment – issues of pain, issues of related health conditions, the possibility of strategies that would mitigate impairments and conditions, possibly even cures.

Tom argues that the social model’s silence on the issue of impairment proves it is wrong. What social model activists need to do is to add detail to the social model so that it is seen to clearly embrace an assertive and positive approach to impairment issues. In this way we can positively address the continuing influence that medical services have on disabled people’s lives and we can reclaim our “medical” selves from the attitudes that persist in the “medical” world. In a sense it is the last bastion of the “medical” model, and understandably for lots of sound reasons it is the toughest nut to crack. We need to rehabilitate the medical world into the social model. We have many allies within the medical professions if we have the courage to tackle this.

Such an approach is urgently needed. With potentially massive NHS cuts, it is entirely possible that most disabled people who have “long-term conditions” are in danger of losing even their relatively meagre health services at the expense of acute health services.

Therapists who could offer support that enables independent living may become even fewer when actually more are needed. And issues around the withdrawal of health support to disabled people via the potentially dangerous “Liverpool Care Pathway”, which in the worst case is state-sanctioned death by neglect, will be allowed to pass relatively unchallenged. Equality and the social model means we have the right to good supportive health services too. We need a message that champions that right within the social model.