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In October 2016 the newly appointed UK Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, Damian Green, announced that some disabled people receiving Employment and Support Allowance would not face reassessment for their financial support to continue. This article critically engages with this announcement in the context of the publication of Improving Lives. The Work, Health and Disability Green Paper shortly afterwards. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments continue to face challenges in implementing effective strategies to increase social and economic participation of people with disabilities. In a recent OECD high-level policy forum on Sickness, Disability and Work, the main policy message was the need for a culture of inclusion; with a dual focus on short-term active policy interventions and long-term structural reform. This paper examines policies in liberal welfare states that encourage people receiving disability benefits to participate in the labor market. Examples from the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia of active labor market programs aimed at moving people with disabilities from workfare are analyzed in the context of international disability rights and neoliberal discourse. The paper explores the extent to which new approaches to activation policies are facilitating parity of participation and factors that impact the effectiveness of these policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adjustments to working arrangements and the working environment have enabled organisations to recruit and retain valuable staff and helped disabled individuals to work and progress in their careers. The qualitative study reported in this paper indicates that generally good adjustments-related practice across 33 British local authorities was beginning to deteriorate under the impact of government spending cuts; and was at further risk from the dismantling of legal protections. The findings have implications for local authorities, but also for national policy-makers and those wishing to influence them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The return of the Labour government to power in 1997 brought an increased focus upon inclusive education for children with special educational needs (SEN). Alongside this there has been a desire to enhance the opportunities young people have to access physical education (PE) and school sport. Previous research has shown that children with SEN often have fewer opportunities to access physical activity due to physical, social and emotional barriers to participation. With the advent of a new Con–Lib-Dem government in 2010 and a planned review of inclusion policies and practices, this paper examines the extent to which children with SEN have arrived at utopia in relation to their entitlement and access to PE. The paper identifies four themes central to successful inclusive PE, whilst suggesting there is still some way to go for children with SEN to have the same opportunities in physical activity as their non-disabled peers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hate crime is now an established term in the fields of racist and religious attacks and is acknowledged in the cultural proscription against attacks on lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender men and women. Disabled people, as so often is the case, are late in being afforded statutory recognition in hate crime. This can be explained in terms of wider constructions of disability and more pernicious and muddled constructions of disabled people as categorically 'Vulnerable'. This construction has arguably weakened the impetus to introducing hate crime provisions and legal justice for disabled people. There is now ample evidence of hate crime being evident and pervasive in the lives of many disabled people. By drawing on two English studies of disablist hate crime, this paper draws out key aspects of hate crime policy and practice, and challenges the constructions of disability, hate and vulnerability currently operating. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding a way to pay service users for research involvement in the UK has become a topic of dispute and despair. By reviewing the available literature, this article aims to document the range of frustrations and to highlight this small area of policy as pivotal to improving research involvement for disabled people (and other service users). Policy papers, guidance notes, reports and papers on payment issues are summarised, examined and juxtaposed. We link the problems described to analytical debates about ethics, power, policy and emancipatory research. While resolution in all these areas is desirable, we show how pragmatic concerns are also important. Mechanisms for paying people are a core problem. They have been changed inconsistently and incrementally. An explicit focus on mechanisms would be a key next step towards improving opportunities for disabled people (and other service users) to be involved in research by, for and about themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that an historical analysis of social attitudes to disabled people is an important but neglected area of study. Attitudes to disabled people will change over time and policy makers within organisations and the general public will be influenced by a variety of social factors. Governmental policies and legislation may prove of minor influence or trigger unexpected change in organisational attitudes. An examination of policy in the disability section of the Scout Association and its approach to disabled scouts illustrates the complexity of influences on organisational policy over time. Documentary evidence suggests that the Association was promoting integration of disabled scouts into the wider organisation during the inter war period when national policies promoted segregation. However in 1959, when major segregative legislation was repealed, there was a change of policy to exclude a particular group of disabled people--that is people with learning difficulties--from full membership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent UK policy changes enable claimants to record their Personal Independence Payment (PIP) assessments, presenting an opportunity to study how they are produced interactionally. Disabled people have often reported feeling disempowered by PIP assessments, and these assessments are notoriously inaccurate – the vast majority are overturned in the claimants' favour upon appeal. Given the quality of claimants' lives often depends on their outcome, it is urgent to learn how the assessment process yields so many successful appeals. Here we analyse a small sample of one PIP assessment recording, uploaded to YouTube by the claimant, to show the importance of understanding these high-stakes interactional situations. We intend for this to show the importance of looking at the interactional detail of PIP assessments, which have hitherto been hidden from scrutiny because of the difficulty of obtaining recordings of assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This short paper examines the extent to which the UK Coalition Government has been inventive or reparatory in their approach to policies governing the education of disabled children and young people. Of central concern here is the extent to which policies contribute to the invention of the disabled child by conceptualising their education as a constant process of reparation. I argue here that this landscape of policy proposals creates particular problems for the ways in which the pedagogic relationship can be conceptualised, reinforcing teaching as a complex negotiation of deficit and anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the concept of fluctuating or recurring impairments has grown both in the public consciousness as well as in frequency of note within policy documentation and legislation. However, contention still surrounds the perceived legitimacy of such impairments, including chronic fatigue syndrome/myalgic encephalomyelitis, epilepsy and diabetes, which have the potential to vary in intensity over time, versus more ‘traditional’ and accepted forms of disability. By drawing on current conceptual discussion and research activities in Canada around what have been termed episodic disabilities, as well as legislative developments in the United Kingdom, this paper will provide an overview of how fluctuating or recurring impairments have to date been conceptualised, contested, and the central issue of competing definitions within this context [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Independent Living Fund (ILF) was a non-departmental public body funded by the Department for Work and Pensions. An efficient and popular system of support, the ILF enabled 46,000 people between 1988 and 2015; however, in 2015 the Fund closed and local authorities (LAs) assumed sole responsibility for supporting former ILF users. This article presents the experiences of 12 former ILF users as they transition from ILF to LA support. We focus on participants’ experiences of ILF and LA support, their transition from ILF to LA support, and the emotional impact of transition. Participants were universally positive about their dealings with the ILF, whilst nearly all were worried about LA provision. For most participants, the process of transfer was not smooth; participants received insufficient information and poor communication from LAs. Participants expressed anxiety and uncertainty over the future and these feelings were exacerbated by the actions of LAs during transfer. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Many disabled people in Britain have experienced profound challenges brought about by a government policy programme characterised by ‘austerity’. Drawing on the work of Fraser and Polanyi, this article explores new ways in which disability studies can become theoretically orientated to the task of explaining and challenging what has become an issue of overbearing importance for many disabled people. It is argued that Fraser’s notion of bivalency encapsulates the combination of cultural and economic challenges which characterise ‘disablist austerity’. Fraser’s development of Polanyi’s work is used to argue that disability studies should be orientated to large-scale economic challenges as well as cultural and discursive concerns that are more often the object of study in the field. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The government are consulting on the introduction of legislation to give professionals powers to enter the homes of ‘vulnerable adults’ where abuse is suspected and remove the ‘victim’ without their consent . This article considers the consequences of such legislation for the ‘intimate citizenship’ of people with learning difficulties who have capacity to consent to sexual relationships. Proposals of the consultation are considered in terms of their practical relevance, finding that changes can be made with better guidance, resources, policy implementation and a sound evidence base for adult protection. A case is made that proposals contravene human rights, mental capacity laws and the ethos of personalisation, increasing the focus on risk in practice. An ecological model of vulnerability is supported, which offers an approach that can prevent sexual abuse through empowerment without the need for new legislation. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]