Active citizenship and aquired neurological communication difficulty

People with communication impairments may face barriers to civic participation, with resulting marginalisation of individuals who wish to be actively involved. The investigation aimed to explore the experience of civically engaged adults with acquired neurological communication difficulties. Six people with acquired neurological communication difficulties were interviewed. Discussion included the definition of active citizenship, their civic involvement, motivations, related barriers and facilitators. Qualitative analysis was undertaken, with data categorised, coded and examined for recurring themes. All participants were active in disability-related organisations and four undertook wider civic roles. Motivations included activity being outwith the home and wanting to effect change for themselves and the populations they represented. Disability group meetings were more positive experiences than broader community activities, which were associated with fatigue and frustration, commonly resulting from communication difficulties and unmet support needs. All participants identified a need for professional and public educational about disability and communication and made recommendations on content, methods and priority groups. For these participants civic engagement had positive and negative dimensions. Speech and language therapists should promote reduction of the barriers that impede the active citizenship rights of people with communication support needs. Civic participation may be a relevant measure of outcome in communication impaired populations

Goodies and baddies: equivocal thoughts about families using an autoethnographic approach to explore some tensions between service providers and families of people with learning disabilities

This paper explores the power of history in affecting contemporary caring practice. Drawing on the author’s personal experience as a social worker, researcher and parent of a daughter with learning disabilities, the article will consider the ways in which the experience of (and to an extent, nostalgia for) the ‘heady days’ of de-institutionalisation continues to influence staff perceptions about their work. In doing so, this article will critique normative notions of choice and control that are at the heart of current moves towards self-directed support and personalised services. The author contends that staff who support people who have learning disabilities need something with which to compare and validate their practice. In the 1980s the hospitals were easily identifiable as something negative with which practice ‘in the community’ could be compared. In the twenty-first century the need for a comparator is still there, but the hospitals and many of their associated structures such as Adult Training Centres have gone. The paper argues that the family can be a contemporary structure against which current practice can be measured