State action is necessary and good for securing rights for people with disabilities
Jenny Morris 11 (Jenny Morris has experience teaching housing policy and sociology, but now works as a freelance writer and researcher. She has written papers and books regarding feminism and disability advocacy,) “Rethinking Disability Policy”, Joseph Rowntree Foundation, https://www.jrf.org.uk/sites/default/files/jrf/migrated/files/disability-policy-equality-summary.pdf, November 2011/CR
From its earliest years, the disabled people’s movement has argued for a welfare state which would include user controlled, pro-active services, delivered within a framework of rights and entitlements and where there are meaningful rights of redress (see, for example, European Network on Independent Living, 1989). As Mike Oliver says:
[the welfare state remains] an essential ingredient for the development of a truly inclusionary society. That is to say, a society in which both disabled and non-disabled people can participate and realise their full potential and where the notion of disability and all its associated deprivations are little more than a dim and distant memory.
(Oliver and Barnes, 2009)
This statement is predicated on the social model of disability, on the distinction made between ‘impairment’ and ‘disability’ and the contention that it is the disabling barriers of discriminatory attitudes, inaccessible environments, and lack of enabling supports which should be the focus of social policy. ‘Disability’ is the oppression and inequality that people with impairments experience as a result of these barriers, and it is possible to envisage
a society in which these barriers are overcome. Linked to this is the argument that investing in the provision of support for disabled people will benefit society as a whole.