Significant Disability: Issues Affecting People With Significant Disabilities from a Historical, Policy, Leadership, and Systems Perspective

This text will provide the reader with a comprehensive overview of the issues that affect people with significant disabilities from a historical, policy, leadership, and systems perspective. The text will be particularly useful in either graduate or advanced undergraduate courses for prospective rehabilitation counselors, teachers, community mental health professionals, social workers, psychologists, case managers, or allied health professionals. A major goal of the text is to transmit the ideal of living, working, and playing in the community—- an ideal that has often been denied to persons who have significant disabilities. Part One of the text, 'Historical, Philosophical, and Public Policy Perspectives,' issues relating to community living—- education, employment, housing, transportation, health care, and leisure- —are explored from a historical perspective that begins with the identification of issues affecting persons with significant disabilities that have impeded independence, productivity, and inclusion within the larger community. Next, an overview is provided on the various social contexts and connections between social and economic forces—- urbanization, industrialization, and immigration- —that fostered the development of institutions as a means of dealing with the poor, deviant, and those with disabilities. The history of institutionalization is chronicled, as well as the key legal and constitutional challenges to segregation and exclusion of persons with disabilities. In Part Two, 'Portraits of Leadership,' the perspectives of persons with significant disabilities, parents, and siblings focus on the issues of everyday life from the vantage point of life roles. Topics, ranging from funding, inclusion, IEPs, related services, assistive technology, employment, stigma, spirituality, advocacy, case management, medication policies, education and training for human service professionals, and adaptation among others, are presented in a passionate, personal, insightful, and meaningful manner. The final part of the text concludes with an assessment and analysis of current policies, and advocates that our educational and human service systems develop an infrastructure or foundation which allows for positive change and encourages inclusion. Specific recommendations of the text’s contributors complete this section.