Under the Medical Model, disabled people are defined by their illness or medical condition. They are disempowered: medical diagnoses are used to regulate and control access to social benefits, housing, education, leisure and employment. The Medical Model promotes the views of a disabled person as dependent and needing to be cured or cared for, and it justifies the way in which disabled people have been systematically excluded from society. Control resides firmly with professionals. Choices for the individual are limited to the options provided and approved by the ‘helping’ expert. The Medical Model is sometimes known as the ‘individual model’
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Posts by James Davidson
Medical Model
Under the Medical Model, disabled people are defined by their illness or medical condition. They are disempowered: medical diagnoses are used to regulate and control access to social benefits, housing, education, leisure and employment. The Medical Model promotes the views of a disabled person as dependent and needing to be cured or cared for, and it justifies the way in which disabled people have been systematically excluded from society. Control resides firmly with professionals. Choices for the individual are limited to the options provided and approved by the ‘helping’ expert. The Medical Model is sometimes known as the ‘individual model’
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Blog: Let’s try it this way…
I started working with Scottish Disability Equality Forum about three years ago. The biggest challenge for me was understanding who our membership was and how best to communicate to them all. The process in place when I started wasn’t wrong at all but I felt it could be simplified, especially with the membership increasing weekly. Our membership is open to all disabled people, therefore the communication needs varied a lot and this resulted in spending days ensuring each member received exactly the format of information they requested, for example: Yellow paper Large fonts in varying sizes Audio tape CD Print
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Top ten tips for communication – how to get better at speaking with people who have a learning disability
Top ten tips for communication – how to get better at speaking with people who have a learning disability Who we are My name is Ivan Cohen and I am a member of People First (Scotland). I am Chairperson of my local collective advocacy group and I also represent People First at the Inclusive Communication Hub Working Group. People First (Scotland) is the independent self-advocacy organisation for people with learning disabilities. People First is run by and for us, the members – this makes us a Disabled Person’s User-Led Organisation. We have more than one thousand members and about one
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