How Disability Related Research Fits within the Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative

The purpose of this roundtable session is for social work scholars to critically reflect on how disability-related issues fit within the Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative (GCSWI) of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AAWSW). While disability has long been an area of practice for social workers across diverse field of practice (e.g., school, mental health, healthcare, child welfare systems), there are still relatively few social work scholars investigating disability-related topics. Since the inauguration of the SSWR Special Interest Group on Disability eight years ago, there has been a steady increase in disability related sessions at SSWR and a growing number of social work scholars are involved in rigorous research efforts to address long-standing challenges facing people with disabilities such as underemployment, stigma, and health and behavioral health disparities. As the GCSWI could drive research in social work in the upcoming decade, it is important for social work researchers to contemplate how the GCSWI corresponds with the grand challenges facing people with disabilities from a lifespan perspective. Thus, the goal of this roundtable, which will be facilitated by active members of SSWR’s Disability Special Interest Group on Disability, is for social work researchers to examine how disability is or could be included in the GCSWI.

The roundtable discussion will begin with a discussion of grand challenges within the area of disabilities, using the same understanding of a grand challenge used by the GCSWI -- that these challenges should be broad, integrative problems with solutions just over the horizon (Uehara et al., 2013). Panel participants will briefly provide their own perspectives on grand challenges related to people with disabilities and their families, including caregiving, health disparities, poverty, unemployment, technology and maltreatment, with the intent to spur discussion among attendees about these and additional grand challenges facing people with disabilities that relate to their research, practice and/or advocacy experiences.

The second part of the session will be a facilitated discussion on how scholarship addressing the grand challenges facing people with disabilities advances the GCSWI.  Each of the Grand Challenges outlined in the Initiative affects people with and without disabilities, but the solutions will likely differ for these two groups. Panel participants will briefly discuss how their particular lines of research correspond with the specific set of Grand Challenges released by the AAWSW. Our goal is to create a dialogue among social work researchers on how disability-related researchers can work within or in conjunction with the GCSWI to contribute to the solution to some of the most pressing problems facing people with disabilities. In addition, this session will provide a venue for networking among sub-groups of disability-related researchers within these Grand Challenge areas.

Finally, the roundtable session will conclude with a discussion of how disability-related research could be more prominent within social work research initiatives, such as the Grand Challenges for Social Work Initiative.