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Tuesday, May 29, 2007

Comment on Disability Charity & User Involvment from Peter Beresford


Peter Beresford is Professor of Social Policy at Brunel University and a long-term service user.


The Remploy Closures: Disabled people, segregation and the small matter of user involvement


Hurray! Three cheers. Drinks all round. Some more segregated employment to close. Remploy is shutting down a number of its workshops for disabled people. The big disability charities – that is to say those longstanding charities for, rather than controlled by disabled people – are applauding and supporting the closures.

Admittedly, not so long ago they were praising the benefits of such segregated provision (some indeed still offering such services themselves). They were also criticising the disabled people’s movement for calling for an end to segregation. Now though they are on the side of the angels - and who knows what government money this might free to come in their direction.

Or is it really all as simple as this? How come some trade unionists and some disabled people, included disabled people employed by Remploy aren’t so keen on the closures? Do they need consciousness raising, some additional empowerment perhaps ? Do they need to have their internalised oppression further challenged? Again, I don’t think it is quite as simple as that.

Because yet again what we are seeing is policy being developed and implemented without another key principle which the disabled people’s movement has long campaigned for – the active and effective involvement of disabled people, other service users and their organisations.

The fact is that we are yet again seeing top-down paternalistic policy at work. Admittedly the rhetoric is right-on, but the traditional non-user controlled charities have become increasingly skilled, as disabled people increasingly argue, at voicing disabled people’s demands, if not necessarily so good at embodying them, themselves.

This policy shift can be seen to follow from broader government policy, committed to moving people from welfare to mainstream employment, as well as the EU’s direction of travel.

No matter about the nature of the mainstream labour market and employment conditions. No discussion about how discriminatory and excluding these still are. No questioning of the benefit traps many service users will continue to be placed in. No guarantees for the people who will be out of a job. No consideration of the pressure to be in a job, any job, regardless of its nature, conditions or quality. No mention of he real and justifiable anxieties disabled people will have because they may not be able to work full-time (or indeed any time) in the harsh world of modern employment practices.

No suggestion that workplaces like Remploy, for all their ideological limitations, might have a place to serve in some people’s lives, where they can contribute alongside others and earn some sort of a crust (albeit not enough) - until some really serious work is done to make open employment truly inclusive, accessible and non-disabling.

There is a big principle here. When people have half a loaf – don’t just take it away, as is now happening, both with Remploy and indeed many more day centres. Instead involve them fully and equally in the process of working to ensure that they can have a whole loaf - like non-disabled people – a truly inclusive, flexible and humanistic labour market and other alternatives. Don’t shut down an existing inferior arrangemenet until you guarantee for everyone the mainstream options all should have a right to.


Peter Beresford is dead right to raise questions about the top down decision making of the disability charitites over the closure of Remploy's factories but he falls foul of his own argument in assuming that the gurantee of 'mainstream options for all as of right' is a realistic or even desirable proposition.

I think its a pretty unrealistic goal .

Peter is honest but a bit niave in expecting ' user involvment ' to ever amount to anything more than the few most able service users being accepted by service providers as having a right to speak on behalf of all other service users. There again, Peter is someone who functions very well in the ' mainstream ' , which is not a fault, but of course it is natural for him to want , desire and possibly even expect everyone else to be capable of his'mainstream' capability and stability as well.

One 'mainstream' loaf for all makes a great political slogan unfortunately its also a pretty unrealistic one for some people whose disabilities dont make them as marketable , stable or independent as Peter is.

4 Comments:

At 10:05 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Peter has been stable enough to become a professor. I'm glad for him but my mental instability has been lifelong and has completely undermined my studies, employment pruospects and relationships so I think he and his friends are guilty of well intentioned 'wishful thinking' , I just wish they would stop trying to ' wishfully think' for me .

 
At 12:26 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

I like the Peter Berisford article and the assumption that disabled people should have a level playing field in the employment market isn't a bad thing. When disabled individuals can't cope with employment then they shouldn't be forced into it in any way but plenty want opportunities they are currently denied. Or as we see at the garden centre they have the opportunity to work and work hard but are called volunteers and not paid for their hard labour.

But basically this Remploy situation is about saving money. A while ago I read up some of the details and saw that the jobs at Remploy are subsidised by around £17000 a year each. That IS a lot of money to subsidise what are basically boring factory production line type jobs. Or to subsidise any jobs for that matter.
The trouble is a lot of the subsidies seem to be caused by high levels of management and supervisor type posts which I'm sure are not usually taken up by disabled people. We see the same problem at the garden centre where there are a lot of non disabled supervisors and managers being paid a lot regardless of their performance in terms of making the Old Moat profitable. So they have no incentive to make it a going concern and thus create more real jobs for the disabled workers.

In the meantime the charities sniff out subsidies for themselves for getting disabled people out of subsidised work places and into mainstream empployment regardless of how this suits disabled people themselves.

At no time do I see the needs of the disabled workers really considered as money yet again talks and calls the shots.

 
At 10:08 pm, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Peter isnt really calling for a level playing field though is he?, he's simply gently tut tutting at Remploy and the disability charities for the way they have treated the Remploy workers in practice while making it very clear that in principle he agreed with their aims.

It doesnt seem to have occured to Professor Beresford to question the ideology behind the top down decision making , even though it led him to use terms like ' segregated' and 'inferior ' to describe the Remploy jobs himself, or look at how that ideology transformed presumably well intentioned professionals like himself into thoughtless uncaring bastards who put their own politically correct beliefs before all else.


Professor Beresford offers no evidence to support that underlying ideology , 'mainstreamism' is simply a politically correct belief he and a lot of other people who make a living from the disability industry just hold to be true, because it is Government policy , because it is 'politically correct, and because it clearly pays them to.

So just for the record Peter, exactly how is a job in a , say, stable , non stressful and friendly print shop paced to suit peoples abilities and needs 'inferior' to a level entry insecure and hectic McJob in the fast food sector?

Perhaps the good Professor could humour us with an answer...

 
At 11:18 am, Anonymous Anonymous said...

Professor Peter Beresford wants to have his cake and eat it. If the ends were justified here the means used to try to achieve them would never have been so devious and cruel.

It's not the concept of sheltered employment which is inferior here its Beresford's thought processes as to simply equate sheltered employment with ' segregation ' is arrogant and dismissive in the extreme. Its also bad social science.

 

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