Social and Medical Model for Disable Persons

Social and Medical Model for Disable Persons

Introduction

Over the past several decades, disability and social work have become increasingly strange bed fellows, in large part due to the espousal of the medical model of disability on the part of social workers. This approach locates disability with the body as a deficit in need of repair, revision or ongoing professional scrutiny. In opposition to this embodied approach, disability scholars and activists have proposed the social model, which holds negative stereotyping and oppression as the disabling factors, thereby creating a binary debate on cause and appropriate response to disability. This binary is not useful in guiding social work to consider disability as a complex phenomenon which requires multifaceted action responses. Therefore propose disability as disjuncture(Ralston, 2008).

Disability

Disability is defined as “Those who have long-term physical, mental, intellectual or sensory impairments which in interaction with various barriers may hinder their full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others” (Shakespeare, 2008).

Social Model and Medical Model for Disable People

Around the world, many efforts are being made to reform child welfare systems to promote better care for children.

Basically there are two main models of disability discourse, the medical model and the social model. The medical model is very much seen as the outdated 'baddie' of the two; to ridiculously simplify, this states that disability is the individual's problem while the social model sees disability as society's problem. It even goes as far as to argue that one's impairment does not disable them, it is society's attitude to the impairment that disables the individual.

Medical Model for Disable People

Traditionally there were two ways of looking at disability - the “charity” model and the “medical” model.

The charity model tended to look at disabled people as those in need of help. Unable to ...