The following is a response to Professor Mike Oliver’s post of 5th June, 2015, with introduction by Dave Nicholls, “The Social model of Disability and Physiotherapy: Reflections from Mike Oliver.” I was delighted to see some work from another non-physiotherapist on this site.[1] While I am always excited to read posts by people who would change physical therapy from within, I think this must also take place in consultation with those across the floor, so to speak. I’d been getting lonely. I was especially interested to see someone as prominent as Dr. Oliver participate in the dialogue. If there is a unifying approach to disability in the field of disability studies, particularly (but not … [Read more...] about Notes on the Social Model of Disability and Critical Physiotherapy – by Thomas Abrams
The social model of disability and physiotherapy: Some personal reflections from Mike Oliver
Many of you will know of the Social Model of Disability, and some will have followed the work of its founder Mike Oliver. We approached Mike to write a post for criticalphysio blog a few weeks ago. This is Mike's response to the challenge of the social model of physiotherapy for future practice. It's more than thirty years this year since I published a book introducing the social model of disability onto an unsuspecting world (Oliver 1983). The idea behind it stemmed from the Fundamental Principles of Disability document first published in the mid-1970s (UPIAS 1976) which argued that we were not disabled by our impairments by the disabling barriers we faced in society. A couple of years … [Read more...] about The social model of disability and physiotherapy: Some personal reflections from Mike Oliver
Connectivity – Contributions from the Network #7 – Jonathan Harvey
Thanks to everyone who sent me comments and thoughts on the Connectivity writing project. Over the next few days I'll post up some of the feedback and thoughts that these pieces. Remember to send comments on these things too and I'll pull them all together. This post came from Jonathan Harvey, PhD candidate (just submitted!), clinician and brain injury sufferer, working at the Open University in the UK. I begin this short note by situating myself as a brain injury survivor who engages with a host of different objects (both living and otherwise) and environments on a daily basis. I started my undergraduate studies with two years of a three year physiotherapy degree in 2001-2003. In … [Read more...] about Connectivity – Contributions from the Network #7 – Jonathan Harvey
Connectivity #2 – Connectivity explained
This post is part of a new project for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. If you want to know more about the project, track back to this postFirst off, a qualifier...connectivity is a complex subject. It would be very hard to sum it up in a few hundred words. My task here is to outline how I understand it in a way that brings other people in to the discussion. Apologies if this explanation misses the mark for you...by all means feel free to offer up your own interpretations in the comments box below. Having argued in the last post that the two prevailing models of disability (the medical and social) rely on the idea that the disabled person is 'other,' connectivity is striking … [Read more...] about Connectivity #2 – Connectivity explained
Connectivity #1 – Critique of the medical and social models of disability
This post is part of a new project for the Critical Physiotherapy Network. If you want to know more about the project, track back to this post.One of the best ways I know to understand connectivity is as a powerful critique of both the medical and social models of disability. The medical model of disability is based on the premise that you are disabled if you have an impairment. You are disabled, for example, if you are blind, have lost sensation down the left side of your body, or have chronic lung disease. By contrast, the social model of disability works from the assumption that it is not impairments that are inherently disabling, but social environments that present barriers to … [Read more...] about Connectivity #1 – Critique of the medical and social models of disability