ABSTRACT
As recipients of social care experiencing ill health/impairment, we have traditionally been seen as passive, powerless and dependent on welfare professionals. Excluded from the planning and management of our own care, we have been required to fit into existing patterns of services often inappropriately delivered and varying in quality (Morris 1993). Welfare professionals have tended to make assumptions about our needs based on generalized stereotypes. Moreover, the medical model of disability has been very influential in professional training and thinking and has served to identify the service user as the deviant, rather than stressing society’s responsibility not to discriminate (Oliver 1989). Individually we have also not been in a good position to challenge these assumptions, for fear of losing services.
