Book Title: Social work practice and disability communities: An intersectional anti-oppressive approach

Book Description: Abstract: Given the high prevalence of disability worldwide, the status of disabled people remains an area of concern for practitioners who seek to respectfully engage with a stigmatized and often oppressed population. The book encourages practitioners to draw on intersectionality theory, the critical cultural competence framework and anti-oppressive practice approaches to contend with the concerns facing disabled people today. These issues include parenting, mass incarceration, ableism, aging and employment, among others. This title acknowledges difference and multisystemic privilege and oppression while also drawing readers’ attention to the importance of solidarity and allyship when it comes to meaningful social work practice with and social change for disabled people. Detailed Synopsis Including Chapter Summaries: Our first three chapters will be introductory. The first will introduce the concepts of disability and impairment, disability cultures and key theoretical frameworks. The second will introduce our practice model. The third will present key access-related policies in the U.S. Subsequently, each chapter presents a key service area as an organizing framework. Each chapter will present key policy and practice topics drawing on the voices of disabled people as much as possible, with at least one case example demonstrating intersecting social identities, as well as discussion questions. We conclude with a chapter on disability civil rights and disability activism.
Contents
Book Information
Book Description
Statement of Aims: The main goal of this book will be to introduce an intersectionally-informed[1] and culturally humble[2] approach to anti-oppressive social work practice[3] with disabled people[4] in the United States.
Our primary objective is to present an innovative practice model for social workers to use with disabled people. The main themes woven throughout the book will be intersectionality theory, the cultural humility framework and anti-oppressive practice. Our secondary objective is to present the experiences of a range of disabled people with different social identities in various service areas as a way to inform better social work practice.
We prioritize the voices of disabled people and their experiences with different parts of the health, education, justice and social service arenas. We will accomplish this by pulling together a team of authors who are practitioners, educators, researchers, and advocates with a range of social identities, including disability identities. This textbook’s structure and the new theoretical framework it presents will be a draw for social work educators. Scholars have identified the significant need for more disability-related content in social work curricula given the significant prevalence of disability worldwide.
Designed as a main textbook for social work courses at the bachelor’s and master’s level or for social work practitioners in the field in the U.S., this work moves beyond a traditional segregated approach to the exploration of disability-specific populations, instead taking a more intersectional approach in discussing specific service areas while weaving in information about the experiences of disabled people with a range of social identities.
[1] An intersectional perspective focuses on the mutually determined influence of multiple, intersecting social identities on our lived experiences within systems of privilege and oppression (Cho, Crenshaw, and McCall, 2013).
[2] As Tervalon and Murray-Garcia, 1998 state, “cultural humility incorporates a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique, to redressing the power imbalances…, and to developing mutually beneficial and non-paternalistic partnerships with communities on behalf of individuals and defined populations” (p. 123).
[3] Anti-oppressive practice involves interrogating institutions and structures to recognize how even when social workers are trying to do good, we can replicate bad. Link this to anti-oppressive practice (Baines, 2011).
[4] We use disability-first language in keeping with current preferences in the disability civil rights community and the preference of one of the authors, who is disabled.
License
Social work practice and disability communities: An intersectional anti-oppressive approach by Elspeth Slayter; Lisa Johnson; Mallory Cyr; Michael Clarkson-Hendrix; Sandy Leotti; Sharyn DeZelar; Rose Singh; and Esther Son is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
Subject
Disability: social aspects