Integrating Critical Disability Studies into Social Work Research, Practice, and Policy

Disability constitutes the largest minority group (~20%) in this country and across the globe, with profound disability-related disparities observed across race and ethnicity, socioeconomic class, rurality, and national and global region. The field of social work is being called to center anti-oppressive paradigms into its research, policy, and practice; however, social work researchers and practitioners often lack foundational knowledge on anti-ableist theories, research priorities and methods, policy goals, and practice strategies. Further, social work has historically considered disability from a charity perspective that sees disability as an individual misfortune and people with disabilities as subjects in need of assistance. This roundtable calls for a paradigm shift towards a more critical engagement with disability informed by the perspectives and advocacy of disabled communities.

Critical disability studies (CDS) can help us address these important ontological and epistemological gaps within the field of social work. CDS is an interdisciplinary field that challenges hegemonic framings that individualize, pathologize, medicalize, and depoliticalize disability, while integrating transformative theoretical frameworks, such as decolonization, critical race theory, queer theory, and feminist perspectives. CDS provides a multi-level analysis of disability that challenges the medical model's view of disability as an individual trait and positions disability as the complex interplay between medicine, society, and bodies.

Social work researchers and practitioners require familiarity with the construct of ableism and how interconnected societal systems assign 'value to people's bodies and minds based on societally constructed ideas of normalcy, productivity, desirability, intelligence, excellence, and fitness' across transnational contexts. Building on this core construct, CDS brings disability and intersectionality together in an explicit manner, while providing important insights into how communities are affected by the creation of able and non-able bodies. CDS has direct applicability to social work by helping us to redefine disability as a natural part of the human experience and address disability-related segregation, discrimination, and prejudice within education, employment, and other societal contexts.

This roundtable will draw upon on the panel's disability research and expertise to facilitate a dialogue on the opportunities and challenges of integrating CDS into social work research, policy, and practice. Presenter one will provide an overview of CDS, including the importance of centering intersectional ableism into these core professional domains. Presenter two will discuss centering transnational anti-colonial, anti-ableist perspectives in social work through ethnographic analysis of disability policies and programs in the context of India. Presenter three will discuss how CDS can inform social work research and provide guidance on applying CDS perspectives to quantitative social work research. Presenter four will focus on the intersections of CDS and mad studies, with particular emphasis on the construction of psychiatric disability/disorder within mental health oriented clinical social work programs. Lastly, presenter five will focus on disability as an experience created by its role in social welfare policy, which was once considered by the field to fit into the preferred category of 'deserving poor' and more recently characterized as an experience marked by stigma, material deprivation, and administrative burden.