Independent living for children and students

Under this sub-theme, Radoš Keravica looks at the practice of “pathologization” of disabled[1] children and how it represents an obstacle to independent living. Building on the work of other researchers, Mr. Keravica examines this impediment through the epistemological framework of the socio-relational understanding of “disability”. His examination also takes into account the rights that children possess under two human rights treaties: the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). Mr. Keravica also conducted a qualitative study with children with disabilities and their parents from England and Serbia. His study reached the conclusion that “disability” is commonly perceived as a negative difference, that there is no consensus on the meaning of “independence” and “self-sufficiency”, that children are often sidelined in medical encounters concerning them and that the practice of pathologization did indeed take place among some of the respondents.

Ikhlas Al Sawwaf’s study on the other hand adopts a more quantitative methodology to explore aspects of independent living for students. In her paper entitled “A pilot study: The effectiveness of a proposed functional curriculum in giving female students with moderate intellectual disabilities functional/life skills in Saudi Arabia”, she examines the effectiveness of implementing functional curriculums in enhancing the functional skills of students with moderate intellectual disabilities. To do this, Ms. Al Sawwaf compared the ability of a group of primary and secondary school students with moderate mental disabilities to acquire a set of functional skills before and after they attended a series of sessions based on her proposed functional curriculum. She also compared the data she collected to another set of data she collected from a control group that shared the same characteristics but were not exposed to the functional curriculum. The study revealed that students who were exposed to the functional curriculum showed an improvement in the skills required for independence compared to both the pre-exposure levels and the control group.

[1] The use of the term “disabled” instead of “person with disabilities” is the author’s sole responsibility and does not reflect the views of the United Nations. The author decided to use the term “disabled” within the meaning of the social model of disability wherein disability is understood as a form of social oppression unnecessarily imposed on people with impairments. The term is associated with the tradition of disability activism and disability studies scholarship in the United Kingdom. While the author acknowledges the use of person-first disability language in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the author self-identifies as a “disabled person”.