RACINO, J.A., PERSONNEL PREPARATION IN DISABILITY AND COMMUNITY LIFE; Toward Universal Approaches to Support

Abstract

RACING, J. A., PERSONNEL PREPARATION IN DISABILITY AND COMMUNITY LIFE; Toward Universal Approaches to Support. Springfield, Illinois: Charles C. Thomas Publisher, 2000, 330 pp., $65.95 hardcover.Racino carefully documents a well-researched account of people with disabilities as these have been present and visible within institutions over the last decade in the United States. She expands here on an earlier work titled 'Preparing Personnel to Work with Persons with Severe Disabilities'. Emergent best practices outlined in the first volume describe the beginnings of the community support movement and efforts to prepare professionals to work in partnership with people with severe disabilities.In her most recent work, Racino explores the growth of the community support movement in the United States and its meaning for people with disabilities. She offers a refined examination of how professionals have shifted their work from 'support' to professionalized advocacy. This becomes an important new model for people with disabilities where professionals accept advocacy in the context of their work within community development. Racino explains that we have moved beyond a simple view of consumer-driven services for people with disabilities and towards a model of independence, individual empowerment, and self-determination. Community building and building capacity creates critical links towards developing such a culture. Moving away from professionalized medical and rehabilitation practices, this volume explores the ways in which professionals must work as active agents of change within institutions rather than focusing on the particularized tasks of service providers. While service delivery is still important, and philosophical work in the area of disability critical, the current professional challenge is one of acting as an agent of change to build community in its broadest sense. Professionals must become experts not only in service delivery and building individual independence but shaping progress towards functionally inclusive communities. This important volume highlights the strategies and reasons for which this challenge must be undertaken.The role of the family is referred to as central and critical in the development of professionals who work with people with disabilities. Families have always been active agents of change and are often most well versed in what advocacy and community means for their family members. Their vital role as educators is highlighted by Racino. At the same time, Racino points out that broader theorizing about disability has not always played a major role in the study of the family in university centers across America. …