Lancaster University Disability Conference

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Lancaster University Disability Conference
"Putting Theory into Practice"
Peter Bailey University of Surrey
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Disabled people and jobs

• Two main points to be made
• Job opportunities
• greater than ever
• Government support
• to be increased to help
• disabled people participate

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Big Conversation question
Should we (the government) extend better help to
get into work, training and rehabilitation to
sick and disabled people in exchange for
increasing responsibilities to find an
appropriate job
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Rights and Responsibilities
The right of a (disabled) person to support to
find work perhaps even a personalised job
brokering service. And,The responsibility to
all one can to get work.
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Purpose of government and society

• The purpose, the absolute responsibility of
  society is to empower all of its members actually
  to produce and live the good life
• (Justin Dart - American disability activist)

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Social Model perspective

• All the other situations from which physically
  impaired people are excluded are linked, in the
  final analysis, with the basic exclusion from
  employment
• (UPIAS 1976 page 15)

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Social Model perspective

• Mike Oliver has expressed similar views
• Work is crucial..when we are excluded from
  work we are excluded from a whole range of
  personal and social relationships and this is
  important for the development of our sense of
  self(Video based on Sociological Imagination
  2001)

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Rights and Responsibilities
Karl Marx had something to say about this too,
only he used slightly different language
From each according to his ability and to each
according to his needs.
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Citizenship

• Civil citizenship
• (free speech, justice etc)
• Political citizenship
• (elections etc)
• Social citizenship
• Right to paid work

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Discouraged workers

• Many of the 1million who want to work seem to be
  discouraged from seeking work because of past
  negative experiences of unfair rejections.
  (Defined as People who believed no jobs for them
  were available)

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Incapacity Benefit

• Unemployed people are described as jobseekers
  capable of work internalised value.
• Incapacity benefit incapable internalised
  value.
• In fact we now know that all disabled people can
  live and work in the community.

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Comfort zones (1)

• cant cope with the work
• havent got the right clothes
• dont know how to use voicemail
• forgotten how to transfer telephone calls

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Comfort zones (2)

• cant find the time
• they be worse off
• wont get back onto benefits
• friends will think they have been faking it

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Why people hate disability

• Colin Hughes concluded people did not hate
  disability, they just wish it would all go away
  and many disabled people have internalised this.
• (Radio 4 June 2001)

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Psychological aspects

• It (the social model) does not automatically
  mean that individually based interventions are of
  no value and are always counterproductive
• (Colin Barnes 2000)

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Government support

• Each disabled person should be entitled to an
  individual participation package to enable them
  to get a job.
• (OECD Transforming Disability into Ability 2003)

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How does the UK compare?

• UK Government spend 1/5 of the EU average on
  assisting disabled people to get a job.
• UK spend an average of 1,750 per young person
  compared with 100 for disabled people.

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What should Government do?

• Major study showed two key problems for disabled
  people getting jobs
• Attitude of co-workers
• Low skill levels
• (CIPD 2001)

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What should Government do?

• Enforce the requirement within the DDA Code of
  Practice on employers to train staff on
  disability equality.
• This should focus on this mindset that disabled
  people cant compete in the workplace started
  by industrialisation and cemented in place by
  scientific management ideas around work
  measurement and bonus schemes and the idea that
  there was one best way to do a job.

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What should Government do

• 2. Give all unemployed disabled people their own
  training budget for personal development, IT
  equipment and training, updating skills or
  whatever they need to be effective at work.

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What should Government do

• 3. Finally, provide a personalised job brokering
  service who can participate in the process of
  getting a job right through to brokering the
  first job and support during the early weeks.

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What should Government do

• This might cost up to 5,000 in some cases but
  this is no more than it costs to keep each person
  on incapacity benefit for a year.
• More importantly this will deliver social
  justice and address the past discrimination that
  caused this situation in the first place.

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