Disability and Inclusive Development is published by Leonard Cheshire International (LCI), a UK-based organization dedicated to changing attitudes about disability in general, and people with disabilities (PWD) specifically, around the world. The institution employs a rights-based approach that places PWD's needs and desires at the center. They work with disability and development organizations throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, and the Americas to ensure that the voices of PWD are heard in the realms of education, health care, livelihood acquisition, and when necessary, rehabilitation.
Disability and Inclusive Development reflects LCI's mission by providing a collection of four essays that critically examine a series of inclusive development practices/policies in education, empowerment, community-based services, and conflict recovery. Each essay provides development practitioners, students, and policy makers with insights into key issues in global development for PWD. The authors question current practices for PWD and then provide possible ways to adapt existing global development practices or develop new ones. The book aims to demonstrate that often so-called "inclusive" policy initiatives and practices do not actually incorporate the voices of those who will benefit from them: the over 6 million PWD from around the world who each experience living with a disability differently depending upon their various geopolitical, national, and cultural contexts. Unlike other policy-oriented books or essay collections published by organizations such as the World Bank and United Nations that have tended to promote universal models of development, these essays reflect disability activists' perspectives by rejecting the medical model of disability and exposing the tensions between universal mainstreaming practices and individual empowerment approaches. The authors critique some of these strategies for not considering an individual's social and cultural contexts. The book, then, also aims to draw on disability activists' knowledge to generate new policies and program initiatives that take into account these contexts.
For example, Susie Miles begins her essay "Inclusive Education" by questioning the universal use of the term "inclusion." She states that "[d]efinitions of the term [inclusion] differ according to the particular interests and concerns of organizations. [ …] [Yet] [m]any practitioners have called for consistency in the use of language. This is extremely difficult [ …] when the term is interpreted differently according to context and culture" (69). Miles suggests that there should not be one single inclusion or mainstreaming blueprint to apply to all countries and contexts; rather, practitioners should look at a range of programs in different countries for inspiration. She demonstrates how some UNESCO's Education For All (EFA) initiatives have failed to mainstream and include children with disabilities because teachers are not trained to teach children with disabilities, schools do not have inclusive environments, and parents and other community members are not active in planning for special needs children. Ultimately, Miles calls for a twin track approach that provides a common method for measuring education outcomes for children with disabilities while being sensitive to cultural context.
Like Miles' examination of inclusive education programs' limitations, Peter Cooleridge's essay "Economic Empowerment" similarly exposes the shortcomings of empowerment focused development programs for PWD. As he describes, empowerment programs have focused on women and people with disabilities because they tend to be more vulnerable than men (without disabilities). While Cooleridge demonstrates the importance of empowerment policies and programs focusing on women and PWD since they are more likely to be adversely affected economically due to cultural expectations about care work, he critiques empowerment policies due to their overt focus on market-oriented work programs. These programs do not take into consideration the common stigma about PWD within the work place or that women often bear the burden of working both inside and outside the home. Likewise, Cooleridge points out that although being able to earn a living may be vital to a PWD's survival and acceptance in society, "People are poor largely because of external factors outside their control," not simply because they do not work (112). Cooleridge notes that economic policy makers and empowerment program planners need to take into consideration local economic, social, and legislative contexts. While mainstreaming PWD into formal work programs may be important, not all PWD live in areas where this is possible. In rural areas, for example, most people work in the informal job sector so policies for rural PWD must offer alternative ways for PWD to contribute to their family's income. Akin to Miles, then, Cooleridge also suggests that one-size-fits all empowerment programs do not work for PWD; rather, policy makers and program designers should consider a person's social and cultural context. To do this, PWD themselves must be involved with policy development.
Just as Miles and Cooleridge discuss the limitations of current inclusion and empowerment programs for PWD, Roy McConkey's essay "Community Based Services" examines how mainstreaming policies often do not consider how definitions of disability relate to cultural context. As he explains, such policies tend to focus too much on rehabilitation. Within rehabilitation models, PWD become recipients of a service as opposed to active participants in determining their quality of life. Despite the fact that the UN 1994 Standard Rules on the Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with Disabilities states that PWD have the right to remain in the community and a right to support, often getting this support means leaving their community for services available only through institutions following the medical model of disability. McConkey claims that until PWD can voice and enact their needs, aspirations, or capacities, they are not fully included in society or empowered. He suggests that policy organizations should consider how strengthening PWD's social and familial networks can help facilitate empowerment and inclusion. Social networks are important for PWD because when PWD are part of a community they can both give support to others and others can support them. > McConkey also calls for a twin-track approach to inclusive polices whereby PWD are provided with specialist (or individual) services along with mainstreaming services. These models work against a mainstreaming approach that often results in programs that ignore a person's disability and instead employ specialists to work with local communities to identify the needs and desires of PWD. This twin-track approach also helps practitioners work with PWD themselves while taking into consideration the individual's community values. McConkey concludes his essay by guiding practitioners through questions to examine how well their empowerment and inclusion programs work, how involved families and communities are in their practices, and the sorts of access PWD have to services.
Following McConkey's practical conclusion, in her essay "Conflict Recovery," Maria Kett's essay aptly concludes the collection with an account of a LCI-based organization. A significant portion of Kett's essay focuses on Leonard Cheshire Centre of Conflict Relief Recovery's objectives and activities, examining the long-term impact of disaster and war on PWD. Using several case studies, Kett demonstrates how PWD are often excluded from emergency relief. Kett turns to LCI's practices to provide the reader with sample templates for taking into consideration the rights and dignities of PWD. For example, like McConkey and Miles who both conclude their essays by identifying key issues and indicators to help disability specialists assess their own mainstreaming programs, Kett points to an LCI project for children with disabilities in Sierra Leone. This project employed a twin-track approach to mainstreaming children and accounting for their special needs by redesigning and rebuilding schools so that they are universally accessible.
Disability and Inclusive Development shows that while governments, NGOs, and supranational organizations often employ the language of social justice, the voices of actual PWD are glaringly absent from policy agendas, priorities, and programs (1). Following this recognition, the authors begin outlining inclusive development as a concept and practice to be examined critically and changed. Thus, Disability and Inclusive Development might be seen as a leading-edge publication; the book asks policy makers to consider the ways that cultural context and individual needs or embodiment ought to impact global policy and program development. Ultimately, the book aims to promote policy and programmatic change so that PWD experience real inclusion and full participation.
