Last week I attended the launch of The Deciding Time published by the Early Action Task Force. Early Action – usually referred to as Early Intervention – has a good deal of support in official circles. Indeed, not only did the debate take place in Westminster but none other than Louise Casey, Director General for Troubled Families […]
Disabled by campaigners, reabled by Paralympians?
I took part in a post-Paralympics Manchester Salon debate earlier this evening asking whether people with disabilities are Disabled by society, enabled by the legacy? This is what I had to say: Baron Pierre de Coubertin, founder of the modern Games, is associated with two notions of what the Olympics – and by extension the Paralympics […]
Disabling the care relationship?
A recent ruling has given encouragement to those demanding a better deal when it comes to social care for people with disabilities. According to The Guardian, from now on ‘councils must make it clearer to service users how a proposed care package would meet their eligible needs’. This is an important step, say campaigners, toward […]
The disabled: the hardest hit?
As the Paralympics gets under way, I will be asking whether the disability rights movement can live up to the Paralympic spirit? Because It seems to me that far from encouraging people with disabilities to overcome the disadvantages they face, it has increasingly become little more than a variant of today’s stifling politics of pity. While […]
Public managers should stop telling people how to behave
First published in The Guardian’s Public Sector Network There is a fundamental contradiction at the heart of the public policyagenda today. While on the one hand we are urged to build a big society where citizens run things for themselves, on the other we are told to ‘nudge’ them in this or that direction and make […]