Community care and disability: the limits to justice

Abstract

This article considers the distinctive injustices experienced by disabled people and assesses recent institutional strategies which have sought to reduce these inequities and exclusions. A principle of ‘enabling justice’ is proposed. This is to emphasize that the attainment of a just society which respects social difference is dependent upon the creation of human environments which satisfy the material and cultural needs of all who occupy them.The article reviews a critical area of state policy practice in capitalist societies – the establishment of community care networks for socially dependent persons. While the policy of community care cannot alone produce enabling environments, it may well lessen one dynamic of oppression which disabled people experience: their sociospatial exclusion in remote, often dehumanizing, institutional settings. However, an examination of the practice of community care in particular national contexts reveals several problems which may frustrate the realization of its policy aims, including opposition to care facilities from nearby residents and structural changes to social policy by neoliberal governments. The article considers these challenges to community care using recent research which has examined the relationship between deinstitutionalization, urban regulation and social policy.