Employing and Accommodating Individuals With Histories Of Alcohol Or Drug Abuse

This brochure on individuals with histories of alcohol or drug abuse and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one of a series on human resources practices and workplace accommodations for persons with disabilities edited by Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, SPHR, Director, Program on Employment and Disability, School of Industrial and Labor Relations – Extension Division, Cornell University

Employing and Accommodating Individuals With Histories Of Alcohol Or Drug Abuse

This brochure on individuals with histories of alcohol or drug abuse and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) is one of a series on human resources practices and workplace accommodations for persons with disabilities edited by Susanne M. Bruyère, Ph.D., CRC, SPHR, Director, Program on Employment and Disability, School of Industrial and Labor Relations – Extension Division, Cornell University. Cornell University was funded in the early 1990’s by the U.S. Department of Education National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research as a National Materials Development Project on the employment provisions (Title I) of the ADA (Grant #H133D10155). These updates, and the development of new brochures, have been funded by Cornell’s Program on Employment and Disability, and the Pacific Disability and Business Technical Assistance Center

Accessing Justice, Evaluating Agency: How 12 Women in Cape Town Perceive Their Local Police Services With Respect to Their Race, Class, Gender, and Geographic Location

Policing in South Africa has a long, twisted history that is still evident in some current police practices and especially in the public’s perceptions of the police. In addition to historical factors such as colonial rule and apartheid, people’s perceptions of the police are also affected by their race, class, gender, and geographic location. Although these factors’ can be considered to have an individual effect on perceptions, it is through a complex understanding of how they relate to one another that a true understanding of a person’s perception can be reached. The inspiration for this study stemmed from these concepts and its goal was to discover perceptions women in Cape Town have of the police and how these perceptions relate to race, class, gender and location. In order to determine this, two focus groups were conducted – one in Langa that included 7 women and one in Stellenbosch that included 5 women. The focus groups revealed four main themes: women’s perceptions of their overall safety, the way that class, as it relates to income, can be used to procure added security measures, that the police are perceived to be completely ineffective, and that race and its connections to gender have a great impact on perceptions of the police and of police treatment. Although the expected outcome of the study was that women would perceive they were treated poorly on the basis of their gender and further, that women in Stellenbosch, as the white upper class, would have a more positive perception of the police than women in Langa, as the black working class, this was not demonstrated by the findings. Instead, the focus groups revealed that all of the women felt unsafe in their areas, regardless of the location and that they believed the police to be totally ineffective, albeit for a variety of different reasons