Disability Impairment Blogging - Help a Genaration: Defination of disability

Disability Impairment Blogging - Help a Genaration: Defination of disability:

What do we mean by Disability

 
What is disability? Disability is the consequence of an impairment that may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, develop...

How do I know if I am eligible for support?

ALS can support disabled and dyslexic students who are studying:

• Foundation studies
• Full time and part time undergraduate studies
• Full time and part time post graduate studies
• Nursing studies
• Distance learning studies

The definition of disability is broad; if you have a physical, mental or sensory impairment which you feel requires support to enable you to study at University, then you may be eligible for support.  The Disability Advisors at ALS will be pleased to discuss with you, your personal circumstances to help you decide if you should apply for support.

Some examples of disability are listed below:

• Specific Learning difficulty, such as dyslexia, dyspraxia or attention deficit disorder
• Asperger/Autism
• Mental health condition
• Mobility issues
• Long term medical conditions, e.g. chronic fatigue syndrome, diabetes, asthma, cancer, endometriosis, lupus
• Deaf/hard of hearing
• Blind/Visual impairment

 Students will need to have medical proof or a diagnostic report to apply for support. The following types of evidence/report may be required.

• Letter from your Doctor or specialist
• Audiology report
• Blind/visual impairment registration
• Diagnostic report from an educational assessor or PATOSS registered Specialist Teachers report
• Letter or report from Community Mental health team or Psychologist

Disability Classification

Although disabilities have been the subject of health care research and services for many years, the field remains in conceptual disarray. Even today, health professionals share neither a common means of defining disabilities nor a common sense of the health care industry's role with regard to people with disabilities. This chapter addresses some of the difficulties and trade-offs involved in selecting a disability classification system to solve these problems and explains the committee's reasons for advocating the World Health Organization's International Classification of Impairments, Disabilities, and Handicaps.

Why pursue a new means of classifying disability? Issues of disability classification have often revolved around the politically sensitive task of deciding whether particular individuals are eligible for social insurance programs, a process that in many circumstances provokes significant controversy. Many health professionals have, therefore, attempted to avoid these controversies by avoiding disability. With the prospect of providing care for an ever-larger aging population, however, the problems of disability classification deserve fresh attention. Older people are more likely to experience chronic illness that, over time, may contribute to disability, and the current lack of organization of disability concepts may leave American health care unprepared to deal with the growing future needs of this population. The committee's efforts, therefore, have been directed toward the identification of a disability classification system that offers a framework

sensitive to the long-term needs of people with disabilities and that is likely to lead to a more unified understanding of these concepts among health professionals.

Even without many of the political pressures that accompany efforts to certify individuals for government benefits, the task of disability classification remains deeply complicated. There are major incompatibilities between the thinking that currently dominates American health care and the service needs of people with disabilities. The following sections give an account of these difficulties, discuss the current state of affairs in disability classification and its effects on disability research, and explain the committee's decision to advocate the World Health Organization's system.

DISABILITY AND THE DISEASE MODEL

The dominant framework for understanding the majority of health problems in the United States is that of the acute care community, that is, the disease model. Yet more and more health professionals are beginning to question the wisdom of using this approach to meet the needs of people with disabilities and those at risk for disability in particular, the elderly, the fastest growing group at high risk for disabilities^, An acute care framework provides a poor view of disability for a number of reasons. Acute care perspectives are primarily restricted to somatic conditions, yet contemporary concepts of disability include phenomena that go well beyond this sphere. Disability may limit an individual's capacity to live independently or care for him- or herself; it may interfere with maintaining or initiating relationships, pursuing career goals, or enjoying leisure activities. Disability may also erect barriers to personal autonomy (e.g., the inaccessibility of public accommodations) and political empowerment (e.g., through prejudice or discrimination) in American culture.

The acute care perspective on health is also problematic for understanding and meeting the needs of people with disabilities and those who are at risk for disability. In the acute care framework, health is most often associated with cure, a linkage that is too limiting in the disability arena. (Some of the problems inherent in the health-equals-cure perspective are apparent when one considers that there is a cure for tuberculosis but no counterpart in treatments for missing or dysfunctional legs.) Health care that reduces its ultimate goal to that of the strictly curative is also likely to make the implicit assumption that health and the absence of disease are essentially synonymous. This assumption makes room for primary

prevention, but it neglects the prevention of disabilities after a disease has been cured or measures to address the needs of individuals with chronic conditions.

Moving from the level of organ or cell function to a consideration of the social effects of disability exposes further incompatibilities between disease-centered thinking and broad notions of disablement. The effects of disease are located in well-defined spaces—the organs and tissues of the human body. By contrast, the spaces disabilities affect are not well defined. Unlike human organs, an individual's life in society cannot be neatly divided into separate parts or components; when such divisions are attempted, the enormous variety of human existence guarantees small likelihood of consensus regarding either the divisions themselves or what constitutes ''normal functioning" within them.

These incompatibilities are evident in the structure of acute care thinking. Each disease constitutes a paradigmatic set of signs and symptoms. Medical diagnosis is the categorical assignment of the patient's concrete and particular health problems to one or several universal disease types. Diagnosis therefore incorporates a shift in which a particular individual's sickness is assimilated into an established and consistent category that is (often) recognized universally within the health care system and associated with specific methods of treatment. Disease classification systems are designed to classify concepts that remain static and abstract.⁴ By contrast, the social manifestations of disabilities must be understood relative to the particular abilities an individual hopes to maintain or achieve. These abilities vary among individuals—they are often matters of individual preference, culture, and social expectations. Attempts to "diagnose" disability according to easily recognized physical abnormalities or by general standards of behavior and social performance may cause the personal aspects of disablement to be overlooked. For example, is it right—or, more important, will the necessary kind of care be delivered—if two wheelchair-bound individuals are classified as having the same disability if one is a mason and the other a writer? In this case, an apparently similar problem assumes quite different proportions and dimensions. Thus, social life not only resists well-defined divisions, but the uniqueness of an individual life makes it highly resistant to universal and abstract categories, which are an essential part of the logic of modern clinical methods. (It should be noted that the uncategorical nature of disabilities is not simply a problem for acute care thinking but for any and all methods that attempt to box a disabled person's difficulties into predetermined categories of ill health.)