Using the Social Model

David Gibbs, Derbyshire Coalition for Inclusive Living

I’d like to bring another angle into the feedback and updating that Simone Aspis has proposed for moving on the Social Model (‘Activate’, February). It’s the angle of a CIL worker (that’s ‘Coalition for Inclusive Living’ in our case, but the variants don’t matter here) after fifteen years developing practical applications of a social understanding of disability.
There are certain personal standpoints to acknowledge:

1. A small-c ‘conservative’ one - as a social understanding has been the single most empowering insight in many disabled people’s lives, I’m very cautious about messing with it.

2. A ‘hard’ one in terms of how I use the social model - that is, all disability is located in environments, communities, administrative structures and attitudes; all personal impairment belongs with the rest of the human differences that make up someone’s ‘personal equation’.

3. A pedantic one: a ‘model’ isn’t a theory or a definition and doesn’t state anything; it’s a basis for acting and finding practical solutions.

I’ll try to unpack some thoughts from around these three points. First, the case for holding on to what we’ve got.
We need a durable model because we’ve got a long-term job. Slowly we’ve come to recognise that it’s a job that will span more than anyone’s lifetime. Also, a model that’s more durable than particular governments and policies gives us a great resource for redressing imbalance of power.

Derbyshire CIL had some success in the mid ‘80s getting social model thinking into joint health and social service strategies for services to disabled people. A few years later social understanding was blown off by ‘Community Care’, and has never returned in any serious way. As an organisation, we had to downsize, restructure, and change strategy - but the vision, underlying model, and purpose all held their course while the policy surroundings changed.

We’re in different times now, but the degree of central control is the same. Countless new people are keen to make a brand new start delivering new policies, as if nothing had gone before. Our continuity, based on its durable model, is a reminder of how much new government ideas owe to the grassroots movements formed, beneath government notice, a generation ago. Not only do we already know about ‘joined-up thinking’ and ‘inclusion’, we’re the authors.

Second, the case for keeping the Social Model hard-edged.

Fifteen years ago, our colleagues in the statutory services followed our lead and referred to ‘disabled people’; now they refer to ‘people with disabilities’. Believing language matters, I used to deplore this reversion. Now I think the important thing is that people are open about where they come from. I’m more and more impressed by how closely the words we use reflect differences in origins, understanding, expectations, and practical solutions. If statute imposes individualised, normalising, consumerist methods - and it does - I’d rather this is acknowledged by language than dressed up by observing ‘correctness’.

I want to keep the differences clear because I don’t believe the methods mix. They are either side of a watershed - welfare paternalism on one side, civil rights on the other.

Third, the case for taking a lead from evidence of the Social Model in use.

In the way we’ve worked, what we learn from each other leads to purposive action, and we continue to learn from the practices we develop. This ‘praxis’ is our means to control development of the Social Model in our own terms, rather than letting other people muck it about.

This is really important, because most of the voluntary sector now believes it exists as an auxiliary of statutory authorities working to centralised policies. The value of people’s direct experience and local community innovation is being eclipsed by targets and quality standards that invade every corner of our lives. Funding authorities believe that having these things imposed on them means they have to impose them on us.

For example, they want us to be ‘providers’, with ‘users’, but to us any notion of 'us and them’, provider and user, is part of the problem. We don’t make that division, and what’s more we’d like them to stop doing it to us.

To understand the Social Model is to understand all these differences - but in our own time, and as needed for our own uses. If there’s a time limit on its usefulness, it’s one where the differences disappear. That means, when there’s an open, inclusive, diverse society in which all public services are fully public and there are no hidden corners where people can be forgotten. Until then, the Social Model is the most powerful principle we have, and there’s a huge stake in keeping it dynamic.

© Copyright British Council of Disabled People 2002