ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the possibilities and limitations inherent in the participation dimension of the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). It concentrates particularly on the environmental component in ICF, and studies environmental determinants of the quality of participation in healthcare settings among persons with mobility impairments. The book highlights how welfare service user movements have placed a new emphasis on how services can have a role in enabling people's participation in mainstream society. It outlines how the increasing interest in the position of parents as collaborators and partners in child welfare takes place within a service attempting to resolve the tension between coercion and voluntarism. The book explores how time use in everyday life activities, in combination with environmental factors, influence participation for young adults with disabilities, using a time-geographic perspective and method.
