While until recently, and still very dominant, professional and lay
public have perceived people with disabilities through the perspective of
medical model, based on the notion of deficiency and regarded the people with
disability to have ‘special needs’ that can be addressed only by specialist
action (in a special institution). The so called social model introduces the
concept of quality of life as a criterion of social intervention. The main aim of
support is to enable people with long-term distress to live a quality life.
This means that we have to observe the ordinary needs and see of which needs
people with various labels are deprived off, what are the contingencies of
these deprivations and what is needed in typical situation corresponding to
these needs.
The type of needs that needs to be observed (Flaker et al., 2008):
1. Housing
2. Work and income
3. Everyday activities (including leisure)
4. Social contacts
5. Interaction and stigma
6. Career and dealing with the system
7. Life events - stress, certainty and purpose
8. Emancipation and affiliation.
At the moment there is little systematic knowledge on patterns of
how people with disabilities satisfy these needs, what obstacles they face and
what kind of support they would need; nor of the extent of unmet needs of the
residents, users or potential users of community services. Below we sketch some
of the insights regarding these.
Strategically, to put people’s needs as a point of departure in
planning services is thus also an important turning point as to look at people
with disabilities as primarily people, and to turn the attention from their
(in)capabilities to the quality of life. It is important to base the strategy,
the development of services on the needs of the people, to consult them
individually (by the means of personal plans) and collectively on local and
regional but also national levels about what their needs are and put the
‘needs’ as starting point of common effort and public response to distress.
In some of the next blogs we will try to sketch the issues regarding
the needs of the people who experience long-term distress. Thus we will try to
indicate basic knots of expressing and satisfying needs based on the insights
provided by our investigation and conceptual work and in great part on the
existing research and other existing data. There was a substantial work done in
term of the research that can inform us[1];
this research is, however, biased in two direction. It is particularly rich on
the issue of employment, while on other topics not informative enough; there is
very little information on everyday life activities and social networks and
similar ‘minor’, hard to detect needs. The research design is usually
descriptive and quantities, as such lack an analytic dimension and insight in
(stories) how people are actually living and coping with their situation.
Reference:
Flaker, V., Mali, J., Kodele, T., Grebenc,
V., Škerjanc, J., & Urek, M. (2008). Dolgotrajna oskrba: Očrt potreb in
odgovorov nanje. Ljubljana: Fakulteta za socialno delo.
[1] Main research reference for the discussion below with be the UNDP survey
“Needs and Demand for Vocational Rehabilitation and Personal Assistance
Services” in the frame of the EU IPA funded project “Promoting Social Inclusion
Services”.
