ABSTRACT
Chapter 12 covers disability, home and social work, which is under researched in social work literature. The notion of disability is contested. This chapter discusses policy debates in the field such as medical and social responses to disability, ableism and disabling policies and practices that shape disabling homes and communities (see also Pease, 2010). For people with disabilities, home can be a physical environment, such as a residential house or institutional care setting, as well as an interactional and relational space that provides for a sense of home and belonging (Imrie, 2004). The places and spaces that can contribute to a sense of home and belonging for some people can be inaccessible and threatening to people with a disability. Research in the UK has found that there are ‘tensions between ideal conceptions of the home and the material, lived, domestic realities of disabled people’ (Imrie, 2004, p. 760). People with a disability are at a higher risk of violence and abuse within their own ‘homes’ and in the community, compared to non-disabled adults. More social work attention needs to be paid to how people with a disability can experience ‘dignity enabling homes’ (Gibson et al., 2012).
