ontinued with the most recent Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disability being passed in December 2006. This instrument has had a major impact. The CRPD provides clear directions and guidelines for legislative change, policy development and implementation for those governments and states ratifying the convention and Optional Protocol.
Social workers work with individuals with a disability, with families who have a child or family member with a disability as well as with communities both domestically and internationally. Our work in these spheres encompasses, direct practice, group work, community development, policy practice, research and advocacy. Social workers have played key roles in the development of antidiscrimination legislation, policies that support persons with disability and the development of disability programs. Social workers work alongside people with disabilities and families to realise social inclusion, community living, employment, family support, and rehabilitation. A policy statement on persons with disability therefore is a key platform for IFSW.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that there are around 600 million persons with disabilities. Other estimates are at 650 million. These cover many types and degrees of impairments. The day to day life of around 25 per cent of the world’s population is affected by disability. There is a strong correlation of impairment and ageing, hence it is estimated that the incidence of disability will rise as the baby-boomer generation age. In the majority world the correlation of poverty and disability is well known.
The history of how people with disabilities are treated is marked by marginalisation, discrimination, profound exclusion, and ultimate extermination. Throughout the industrialised world people with disabilities have experienced marginalisation, segregation, stigma and social exclusion. In the developing world attitudes to disability vary according to social norms, religious beliefs and cultural values. Some impairments are not viewed negatively in some cultures for example. However, most people with disability have been viewed in stigmatised ways.
Historically, people with disabilities were placed in large institutions where they remained cut off from family, isolated from society and subjected to often brutal treatment. Following a medical model of disability, people with disabilities were typically regarded as objects to be fixed by medical treatment, as objects of charity to be rendered welfare or as a burden of care. Many of these values are still prevalent today.
The advent of the disability rights and community living movements in the latter part of the 20th century brought about a number of changes whereby people with disabilities started to be regarded as active and participating members of society. However, it is still the case that most people with disabilities are still disadvantaged socially, economically, educationally and vocationally.
Disability is a contested concept and definitions have varied over history and according to social norms. There is considerable debate as to what is disability and who are the disabled. Later models of disability distinguished between the various components of disability and for the first time differentiated between the objective impairment, the resulting level of functioning (disability) and the social components that handicap the individual. Impairments can be physical, sensory and cognitive and also include physical, mental and chronic illness. The social model of disability emphasises the perspective that disability is created through structural barriers and is thus created by society while individual, medical models have viewed disability as something inherent in the person.
The CRPD states:
Disability is an evolving concept, and that disability results from the interaction between persons with impairments and attitudinal and environmental barriers that hinders full and effective participation in society on an equal basis with others. Disability thus results from an interaction betwee