Supported Decision-Making: Emerging Paradigm in Research, Law, and Policy

Supported Decision-Making: Emerging Paradigm in Research, Law, and Policy

Peter Blanck

Blanck, P. (2021). Supported Decision-Making: Emerging Paradigm in Research, Law, and Policy. Journal of Disability Policy Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177/10442073211023168


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Supported decision-making (“SDM”) is an emerging paradigm in which people use friends, family members, and professionals to help them understand and address the situations and choices they encounter in everyday life. The aim of SDM is to empower individuals to make their own decisions to the maximum extent possible to increase self-determination. SDM is an alternative to overly restrictive guardianship or substitute decision-making regimes to which persons with cognitive and mental health disabilities historically have been relegated in law and policy. This special issue examines emergent issues involving SDM in areas of research, law, and policy. It examines SDM from American and comparative law, research, and policy perspectives, as recognized in Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, and from the perspective of the lived experience.

Socially Constructed Hierarchies of Impairments: The Case of Australian and Irish Workers’ Access to Compensation for Injuries.

Paul Harpur, Ursula Connolly, Peter Blanck

Harpur, P., Connolly, U., & Blanck, P. (2017). Socially Constructed Hierarchies of Impairments: The Case of Australian and Irish Workers’ Access to Compensation for Injuries., Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation, 27(4), 507–519 (DOI 10.1007/s10926-017-9745-7).


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OBJECTIVES:

Socially constructed hierarchies of impairment complicate the general disadvantage experienced by workers with disabilities. Workers with a range of abilities categorized as a “disability” are likely to experience less favourable treatment at work and have their rights to work discounted by laws and institutions, as compared to workers without disabilities. Value judgments in workplace culture and local law mean that the extent of disadvantage experienced by workers with disabilities additionally will depend upon the type of impairment they have. Rather than focusing upon the extent and severity of the impairment and how society turns an impairment into a recognized disability, this article aims to critically analyse the social hierarchy of physical versus mental impairment.

METHODS:

Using legal doctrinal research methods, this paper analysis how Australian and Irish workers’ compensation and negligence laws regard workers with mental injuries and impairments as less deserving of compensation and protection than like workers who have physical and sensory injuries or impairments.

RESULTS:

This research finds that workers who acquire and manifest mental injuries and impairments at work are less able to obtain compensation and protection than workers who have developed physical and sensory injuries of equal or lesser severity. Organizational cultures and governmental laws and policies that treat workers less favourably because they have mental injuries and impairments perpetuates unfair and artificial hierarchies of disability attributes.

CONCLUSIONS:

We conclude that these “sanist” attitudes undermine equal access to compensation for workplace injury as prohibited by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities.


Supported Decision Making