Alternative Views of Empowerment: Social Services and Civil Rights

Abstract

In recent years, important social changes, spearheaded by increasing influence of disability rights movement, have promoted a growing search for an alternative to paradigm that has traditionally dominated research and practice concerning disability. According to this model, principal difficulties associated with disability resulted from loss of some physical or occupational capability; and major solutions to these problems involved efforts to improve physical and vocational capacities. From this viewpoint, disability resided exclusively within individual; and emphasis was centered on a clinical assessment of a person's remaining skills. Little thought or interest was devoted to external restrictions in individual's social and work environment Emener's empowerment model represents a significant attempt to progress beyond confines of this traditional approach. By presenting a holistic perspective that encompasses rehabilitation system, rehabilitation professionals, and families as well as person with a disability, he has taken a major step toward focusing attention on broader issues affecting employment and other opportunities available to Americans with disabilities. Certainly, there is much to be praised in a philosophy that seeks to establish the quality of life and ... happiness ... of each individual client instead of closures as standard for evaluating succes of rehabilitation services. Despite this expanded orientation, however, his viewpoint is restricted by tendency to assess role of people with disabilities primarily as rehabilitation clients or consumers rather than as citizens. Emener does not confront question of discrimination directly. His concept of empowerment is limited by failure to propose a specific means of combatting aversive attitudes that have frequently prevented persons with disabilities from securing jobs and other crucial sources of satisfaction in life. In order to appraise strengths and weaknesses of Emener's philosophy, therefore, it is necessary to contrast this understanding of empowerment with another major model of disability that seems to imply an even more extensive role for rehabilitation professionals. Perhaps principal paradigm that has emerged in prior research on disability as an alternative to functional-limitations orientation is minority-group model. From latter perspective, major problems confronting citizens with disabilities are essentially similar to difficulties of disadvantaged groups that have encountered discrimination on basis of physical attributes such as race or ethnicity, gender, and age. Americans with disabilities not only have one of highest rates of unemployment and welfare dependency in country, but they also have been subjugated by rigid barriers of segregation in education, transportation, housing, and public accommodations. Probably primary distinction between disabled minority and comparable segments of population is that other disadvantaged groups have finally begun to refute assumptions about biological inferiority after centuries of struggle. If disability is viewed as a possible source of stigma and attitudinal aversion rather than as a functional limitation, strivings of persons with disabilities to achieve equal social and employment opportunities fundamentally rests upon implementation of their legal and constitution rights as well as upon effectiveness of rehabilitation programs. As a result, civil rights instead of social services becomes natural foundation for a joint effort by rehabilitation systems, professionals, families, and disabled citizens to improve their status in society. The minority-group model also is based on a new and expanded understanding of disability. Whereas functional-limitations paradigm was based both on a medical interpretation that stressed physical inabilities or limitations and on an economic view that emphasized vocational restrictions, minority-group approach is founded on a socio-political definition that views disability as product of interaction between individuals and environment. …

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