Focus Birmingham

Focus Enterprises’ Vision -
A wider definition of disability

A person with a disability is defined under the Disability Discrimination Act (DDA) as someone who has a physical or mental impairment that has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on his or her ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities. The social model puts the person at the forefront. It emphasises dignity, independence, choice and privacy. By contrast the medical model, arguably old style thinking, concentrates on disease and impairments. It puts what is wrong with someone in the foreground. It is concerned with causes of disease or illness.

For projects that engage with those with disabilities Enterprise’s vision is to concentrate on the needs of the person with the disability, not the needs of the illness or disease. But we take the definition further still. Disability throws up challenges and barriers that become disadvantages. Sometimes these disadvantages come from other sources; social, economic, educational and cultural are examples. As an example, Enterprises finds such disabling disadvantages amongst the long term unemployed, whether disabled or not by the accepted definition and seeks to support the long term unemployed in the same constructive and goal centred way. Therefore, we base our activities and services on dealing with ‘disadvantage’ within which we might include physical or learning disabilities – and how to solve those problems creating disadvantage.