The Development of Disability Policies in Britain

Abstract

This chapter paints the backcloth against which any evaluation of contemporary British disability policies must be set. In the previous chapter, I described several points along a spectrum ranging from extremely negative responses towards disabled people right through to the guaranteeing of their citizenship. In what follows, the reader will see that the British experience has consisted of a general trend, starting with policies intended to isolate disabled people from society and from each other, and moving gradually through a piecemeal service approach towards the ‘foothills’ of citizenship. The encapsulation of disability within a medical context is of critical importance here because such understandings have been paramount in the formulation and implementation of policy. From Victorian times through to the present day, policies have reflected four successive (but overlapping) kinds of objective, and medicine has provided the main context for the first three of these. The goals of policy have been: to effect the containment or segregation of disabled people; to provide redress for social exclusion, and especially to compensate disabled people for injuries received in war or at work; to provide welfare through social services, ostensibly as an attempt to reintegrate disabled people into society and also as an attempt to ‘normalise’ or control them; to secure rights and citizenship, and, where necessary, reconfigure the social and built environment.