That other thread was getting unweildy.
I thought I'd post a few thoughts about the medical and social models of disability and what they mean to me. I've sure seen some lively discussion about them and also learned they are unfamiliar to many here.
The best example I have of the difference between the medical and social models happened to me a couple of years ago when I was in medical school. I have mild cerebral palsy that mainly affects my hands, especially my handwriting. I cannot handwrite more than a few sentences at a time. I can type.
I went to my dean and outlined how, when I worked in the hospital, I would need to type my notes that the other students handwrote. Her response was that it wasn't allowed (a saga in itself.) Then she suggested that occupational therapy might fix my handwriting problem so that I would not need to type (and thus they would not need to accommodate me.) This was a classic medical model response. The solution to the problem of weakness and athetoisis in the hands is to fix the hands. The problem rests solely in the body of the person with the abnormal hands - me.
My proposed solution was not to try to fix my hands, since this had already proven to be impossible through prior OT. Instead my solution was for the school to accommodate me by allowing me to type my notes. This is a social model solution. It shares the problem out between my hands, me, the job I was asked to perform and the institution asking me to perform it. It doesn't discount medical interventions - if OT or botox or bracing was going to be useful to me, that is very much supported by the social model. But it rephrases the problem. The problem isn't my hands. The problem is that the notes need to be on the charts and the conventional method - handwriting - wasn't going to do it. The solution was an accommodation. With that accommodation, I could do the job whether my hands worked or not.
My boss now has never heard of the social model but clearly embraces it's philosophy. When I broached the fact that I needed to type my notes, his response was "I don't care if the notes are typed or handwritten so long as they are accurate and on the charts." Is it any wonder that even though my hands don't work any better now than they did last year, I don't feel nearly as disabled at my current job than I did at school before?
