People with disabilities: theories and methods of social work

Historical overview:

• People with disabilities, general overview;
• Social constructions of disability: people with disabilities in an international context; Institutionalisation and deinstitutionalisation of people with disabilities in an international perspective with a focus on Eastern Europe;

Theoretical concepts:

• Inclusion/exclusion; Inclusion and assistance;
• Medicalisation, eugenics and social Darwinism;
• Spatial segregation and pathologisation;
• Naturalisation and biologisation of disability, madness, dependency and old age;
• normality, normativity and the norm;
• ethnicisation and racialisation of people with disabilities;

Psychosocial concepts:

• Deinstitutionalisation, normalisation, independent living;
• Coping with crisis, loss and forms of support;
• Concepts of self-determination;
• International CRPD documents;
• National legislation on people with disabilities;
• comparisons of social policies in specific areas;
• children with disabilities and the work of social workers;
• people with intellectual disabilities and their relatives;
• social worker in the Commission for the Guidance of Children with Disabilities;
• social work in day-care centres;
• the impact of user movements and users' perspectives;
• media representations of people with disabilities and their effects;
• Gender perspective, violence and sexual abuse of people with disabilities;
• support from relatives/relatives as support.