Labour Research Disability Findings

Only 24% of adults with long-term mental health problems have jobs, the lowest employment rate for any of the main groups of disabled people. This is what Roisin Woolnough discovered researching for an article – Fighting the fear factor – in the February 2007 edition of Labour Research. Her report is based on her reading of a recent government report, Mental Health and Social Exclusion. See a summary of the government’s report at
http://www.socialexclusionunit.gov.uk/downloaddoc.asp?id=185

Recent legal changes have consolidated a decade of improved employment rights for disabled people. This comprehensive guide explains the legislation and how unions are making the most of it, and looks at new developments that could accelerate or impede progress on achieving disability equality in the workplace.
is published by the Labour Research Department, 78 Blackfriars Road, London SE1 8HF, price £5.70 or £11.40 for employers or commercial organisations. LRD booklets are also available on subscription at an annual cost of £34.45 (£76.95 for employers/ commercial organisations). LRD publishes 10-11 booklets each year.

Labour Research Department is an independent think tank representing the trade union movement.

Disability Handbook Launched

It’s a cracker! That’s the verdict on the NUJ’s new Disability Handbook by those who have seen it. Produced in hard copy as a glossy, A4 size booklet, the handbook consists of twenty-nine pages of information on journalism and disability, covering subjects such as disabled members in the workplace, disability and the law, union activity and campaigns – even the new Equality Acts in the Republic of Ireland are discussed Portrayal issues and – especially important for journalists – appropriate language in dealing with disabled people are also included.

The handbook comes as an A4 booklet, or as PDF available here but is also available in whatever format you need. It’s on the main Union website at www.nuj.org.uk or simply contact us in the DMC and we’ll get the information to you in whatever format you request.

The Handbook will be officially launched at this year’s ADM in Birmingham 12-15 April and other launches will be held in various locations in Ireland and in UK .
disability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdfdisability-handbook.pdf

Results of Disabled Members Survey

The National Union of Journalists’ Disabled Members Council (DMC) has released details of a survey of union members which shows that a worrying 31% of disabled NUJ-member journalists are ‘long term’ unemployed.

DMC Chair Stephen Brookes said: “This is a serious problem which shows that the lack of disability representation and journalism in newsrooms will do little improve society’s understanding of disability.”

The NUJ Disabled Members Council is working hard to improve the status of disabled people in the media, both in representation and employment, and the survey has shown that some serious problems face disabled journalists.

Mr Brookes said: “Other findings of immediate concern are that 4.1% of disabled journalist respondents have experienced actual discrimination in the workplace, and 8.4% have experienced problems with job opportunity access.”

One respondent to the anonymous survey commented: “In looking at employment of disabled people in the media, ‘the best person for the job’ is a loaded term. It could mean ‘who fits in’ or ‘who doesn’t create problems’, and clearly disabled people are seen as causing problems. The playing field should be equal, but unfortunately there are subjective qualities and access barriers or health and safety problems, which are just bad excuses that are brought into the game and before a job opportunity could ever begin it frequently is ended.”

Other important responses showed that in terms of representation of disability, 56% of non-disabled respondents consider that disabled people are not represented fairly in the media, and this reply goes up to a massive 87% from disabled members.

Mr Brookes insists that: “The support of the non-disabled members of our union is essential in ensuring that disabled people do not continue to be the invisible group in the media industry.” And he added: “The survey results show the sad truth of employer-created discrimination facing disabled people in all areas of employment in the UK, and I specifically urge all media organisations to urgently re-evaluate their disability equality policies.”

For more information contact NUJ DMC Chair – Stephen Brookes MBE on 01253 594114 stbmbe@aol.com or NUJ Equality Officer Lena Calvert on 0207 278 7916.

28/03/07

OK Joke Over…..

Well, OK, that last post was only half a joke. I didn’t notice that the date for submissions had expired, so sorry about all that, he says tugging his forelock….

Culture! Disability! Talent! International Film Festival

SUPERFEST International Disability Film Festival Calls for Submissions: Your Opportunity to Contribute to Disability Culture

Superfest, the world’s longest-running juried international disability film festival, is seeking your entry for submission to our 27th film competition. Superfest is the primary international showcase for cutting-edge films that portray disability culture and experience in all its diverse, complex, and empowering facets.

NEW FINAL ENTRY DEADLINE: January 15, 2007 (post-marked). Early bird discount if mailed by Jan. 3, 2007. Judging takes place in Spring 2007, and winners will be announced on or around April 1st, 2007. Winners will be screened in the SF Bay Area in June 2007, and all entries will be listed in the festival catalogue. Winners will be asked to provide still production photos and tape copies for publicity purposes.

Contact:

CDT
(510) 845-5576
cdtinfo@aol.com P.O. Box 1107
Berkeley, CA 94701

Disability Champions are coming

Disability Champions are Trade Union members who are specifically trained in disability issues such as meeting the DDA requirements, negotiating on behalf of disabled workers and flagging up the cause. All champions receive five weeks intensive training around the UK. Attempts to bring the scheme to Ireland are ongoing.

The scheme is ran by Dave Parr, contactable at dave@disabilitychampions.com or have a look at the website http://www.daveparr.co.uk/dc/frames.htm

Making it Happen at the TUC: 2nd October 2007

Make it Happen is the title of a one day event for disabled people trying for a career in the media. It’s being held in TUC Congress Centre, Great Russell Street, London on Tuesday 2nd October 2007. Beginning at 9am, the programme for the day includes guest lecturers, workshops and one to one meetings with key decision makers from across the media industry.

The event is open to talented disabled people – either those already working in the media who are looking for new opportunities, or graduates from university or college who are looking to start a career in the media.

Contact John Slade at RNIB in Birmingham for more details – Phone 0121 6654232 or Email
john.slade@rnib.org.uk

New BBC Drama featuring Disabled actors

A new, 10-part children’s series about a wheelchair basketball team is coming to CBBC.

Comedy-drama Desperados features a cast of disabled actors, and stars Paralympian and TV presenter Ade Adepitan as a coach searching for new talent to help his team stay in the league.

He told DN: “TV represents a cross-section of society, the black and Asian communities, and the disabled community. There has been a lack of programmes with people with disabilities and a lack of role models.”
But he said there was more to the show than disability. “What’s more important is that it’s a good drama.

“The script is funny as well as being hard-hitting. It’s a real rollercoaster ride.”

He described his fellow actors, many of whom were wheelchair basketball players rather than professional actors, as “all really good, really enthusiastic”.

He said critics’ reactions so far have been positive.

“In the past, attempts to portray people with disabilities haven’t been too good, so people were expecting it to be naff.”

Desperados starts on Wednesday, 31 January, at 5.30pm on the CBBC
channel, and will be coming to BBC2 in March.

Review of Tom Shakespeare’s new book

I hasten to add these are my own musings and not those of the disabled members council. I just thought to get people thinking about the issues Tom has raised, so don’t shoot the NUJ, shoot me!
Michael Morgan

DISABILITY RIGHTS AND WRONGS

Tom Shakespeare
Routledge, 2006
ISBN 10:0 – 415 – 34719 – X

Bert Massie of the DRC has compared Tom Shakespeare to Galileo, which I think is overdoing it a bit, though there is no doubt that this is a full frontal assault on the central ideological stance of the disability movement – the social model of disability. Many of us have been critical of the social model before this – some want to bin it altogether, and some want to develop a more advanced social model which will ‘extend’ the theory to accommodate the other sides of disability – the psychological, medical, emotional etc – so glaringly absent in the original. Tom Shakespeare is however nothing if not radical: ‘social model theory has reached a dead end’. The problem is what do we replace it with?

The social model of disability emerged from the political struggle of disabled people to bring in legislation to secure the rights of disabled people, a drive that ultimately resulted in the Disability Discrimination Act coming into law in 1995. As successful social movements do, it developed a simple set of rhetorical positions, distilled into memorable slogans – ‘it’s society that disables people, not their bodies’. This helped inspire a generation of disabled radicals whose action in turn helped to secure the legislative change.

All so good, except this initial ideological stance was now developed into a full-scale social and cultural theory, one moreover which presented an overall definition of disability. The key problem was the dichotomy laid down between the social model of disability and the medical or individuated model. Essentially this meant disability became a social construct, one in which impairment as such was held to be neutral if not irrelevant. This led to denial of the medical side to disability – now theorised as the medical model of disability – and this generated increasingly bizarre hostility between the medical model and the social model. The medical model was now inflated to include not just medical professionals but also medical sociology, indeed anything that even hinted that there was ever a medical side and the social model on the other side which held disability to be exclusively social – that it was society which created the problem of disability, that it was all simply a matter of discrimination, of barriers erected in the way of disabled people, and further that there was no necessary connection between disability and impairment.

In a sense social model adherents were drawn into a weird kind of wish-fulfilment where reality was denied and a fantasy world was substituted in its place. I’ve always suspected that social model theory has functioned as an escape route via theory of the unpleasantness of disabled reality, for it allowed disabled academics an imaginary level of discourse wherein the gross physicality of impairment could be denied. The whole theoretical edifice of the social model has been built on this basic denial. And now Tom Shakespeare has come along to point out that the disabled emperor indeed has no clothes…

Tom Shakespeare used to be the leading academic light of the social model of disability. That he has now changed his mind is something he relates in an early chapter. He has been aware of the criticisms levelled at the social model for years, but I think it was his experience at PEALS at Newcastle University that forced him to conclude that something was badly wrong in the current approach. A basic hostility to all things medical amongst social model adherents, and the ferocious response towards the new genetics in particular – seen most notably in the DAN demonstrations against ‘Nazi eugenics’ at PEALS – provided the catalyst that led him to write the present book.

Tom Shakespeare writes from a perspective derived from critical realism. Philosophically critical realism developed in response to post-modernism and in holding that there is an objective reality ‘out there’ – even while recognizing the phenomenological and epistemological problems involved in ascertaining it – rescued social science research from mere story telling and the dead end of postmodernist theory. It’s no accident that almost all disabled studies research under the social model has been based on social constructionism – precisely because it prioritized theory over empirical research and so enabled social model theorists to deny reality for so long.

One of my delights in recent years was to read Ian Hacking’s book The Social Construction of What? which cheerfully demolished the pretensions of social constructionism. Like that scene from Lord of the Rings when Gandalf rouses the king of the Ronin from his centuries-long stupor, this also caused social scientists to cast off the heavy weight of theory and to reaffirm the primacy of research into, um, reality. The postmodernist spell was broken. Tom Shakespeare has also read Hacking – indeed he acknowledges this several times. It’s Tom Shakespeare’s continual reaffirmation of reality over theory and a rediscovery of empirically based research that forms the structure behind his analysis. As John Banville put it in his novel, Copernicus, ‘theories are but words, the world is a fact’.

There are however a few omissions in his reading which maybe are worth a mention. He could have paid attention to Colin Low’s critique of the social model, which was published a few years ago. Low’s argument was for a complex model of disability; one, which referred to separate dimensions of disability – a medical dimension, a social, dimension (and an emotional dimension, psychological dimension, sexual dimension etc.) all operating within the same overall model.

Maybe we don’t need to employ any sociological or cultural theory at all to bring home the essential truth that disability is complex. ‘”There are sides to disability that most people are unaware of”, ran the strapline on a series of TV advertisements on Ulster TV a few years ago. It drew attention to the social dimensions of disabled life – education, employment, transport, and poverty. It didn’t once mention the medical side to disability – because it didn’t need to – but it seemed to me that this ‘model’ could be extended to cover all the other dimensions inherent in the disability experience as well the medical, psychosocial, emotional and sexual. Maybe no theorization of disability is required.