Book review

Title: Social Work with Disabled People
Author(s): Oliver, Michael; Sapey, Bob
Year: 2006
Edition: 3
Number of pages: 232
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
ISBN: 1403918384
Price: £17.99

Reviewer: Pauline Noden, Principal Lecturer in Social Work, Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College
Review date: 20/07/2007

My review is from the multiple perspectives of a social work educator, a user of services for disabled people and as a one-time practitioner working with adults. My first reaction on reading this book was disappointment; not with the book, but with the fact it brings home so clearly how little movement there has been towards social work being practiced within the social model of disability since the book was first published. There should have been so many more exciting developments to discuss, but despite extensive disability discrimination legislation, there aren’t; so the authors have been left to cite Direct Payments as one of the few pieces of empowering policy and practice which has developed over the last 20 years. Even then they had to point out that there was considerable reluctance on the part of some professionals to support service users to have their needs met by Direct Payments.

The book is a “must have” for students on post qualifying courses, practitioners and social work educators as it is an excellent tool for prompting critical reflection on practice at this level. It has sufficient detail of the social model and of disability issues for those who already have some grounding. The authors’ discussion of the use of counselling in social work with disabled people is excellent. They point out that counselling from a social model perspective should be about enabling people to reframe their vision of themselves as being “damaged/less able” to viewing themselves as being disabled by their physical/social/psychological environment, rather than counselling them to come to terms with their impairment.

As the book is a bit of a whistlestop tour of the development of the social model of disability, and subsequent legislation and development (or lack of) in practice, it is not one I would suggest our undergraduate students on the pre-qualifying course should purchase. However, I will certainly make reference to the authors’ recommendations regarding social work education and practice. The chapter on Direct Payments would make good pre-reading for a seminar at this level.

I have used the suggested exercise on getting students to rephrase questions from an OPCS (Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys) survey, which are based on the medical model, to ones which represent the social model, and it works well.

My only criticism is that Oliver and Sapey did not comment on how it feels for a disabled person not to have their needs addressed in an appropriate way today as compared to how it felt in the past. Twenty years ago we had low expectations and felt happy that things were improving all the time. Now that the physical environment is so much more accessible and our expectations have been raised, working with or receiving services from professionals whose practice has not changed really, really hurts.