ABSTRACT
This chapter adopts a broadly socio-political model of disability. Definitions of disability can be grouped into two broad models which have been viewed as oppositional until quite recently. The first model is variously described as the functional-limitations, individualistic or medical model of disability. The second, social model identifies disability as societally or attitudinally based. Since the 1980s the influence of neo-liberal ideology on British central government thinking has led to the widespread reform of state welfare policy and provision, including much of that which pertains to the lives of disabled people. A distinct social geography of disability emerged as new spaces, often on the fringes of towns and cities, were created to segregate the mentally and physically disabled from the rest of society. Nevertheless, it is clear that the institutionalization of disabled people coincided with the spatial separation between work and home that accompanied the rise of industrial capitalism in most western economies.
