Ann Fudge Schormans – författare

This book presents the lived experiences of young people with cognitive disability and their struggles as they transition to adulthood. Whether you are a young person yourself looking to transition to adulthood, a parent, or a professional supporting a young person, this book will help you understand the systemic failures which have caused abuse, exploitation, neglect and violence. But it will also outline the inner and outer resources which have enabled young people to maintain their self-belief and overcome adversity. Despite the fact society is failing these young people, the young people in this book speak of belief and have hope for the future. Drawing upon the United Nations human rights framework, this book provides a narrative for empowerment and reform. It involves the input of co-researchers with disability and includes Easy English summaries in each chapter to ensure its accessibility to young people with cognitive disability.

In Canada, social work—both the profession and the academic discipline—has given inadequate attention to individuals living with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities. This is true regardless of whether the social work role is in a clinical capacity, community-based programs, academic research and educational endeavours, or an advocacy role or supporting self-advocacy for basic needs and rights to services and supports. Many people with autism and intellectual and developmental disabilities, and their supporters, value community involvement and integration, quality of life, and access to a wide range of services, so it is likely that social workers will encounter these clients in their careers. Consequently, the onus is on the social work profession to attend more fully and carefully to preparing students, practitioners, and researchers.This peer-reviewed volume provides a range of perspectives, practices, and ideas relative to social work’s engagements with individuals living with autism, intellectual disabilities, and developmental disabilities. Contributors include social work practitioners, academic and community-based researchers, educators, activists, and self-advocates. Reflecting different ways of theorizing, speaking about, and working with people with autism, intellectual disabilities and developmental disabilities, it explores both tensions and possibilities for social work practice, research, education, advocacy, and policy development that better meet their needs and desires for their lives.

Disabled sexuality has too often been cast as taboo, as disabled people are routinely de-sexualized, infantilized, or positioned as objects of pity and (over)protection. Nevertheless, despite facing numerous obstacles to sexuality, sexual expression, and parenting, individuals with disabilities have consistently showcased resilience, agency, and creativity. Disabilities, Pleasures, and Sexualities: Transforming Perceptions, Cultivating Desires, volume 17 of the Research in Social Science and Disability series, seeks to highlight and celebrate these qualities with contributions that challenge stereotypes, reimagine expressions of sexuality, illuminate aspects of reproduction and parenting, and explore different forms of intimate relationships. They recognize, affirm, and celebrate the reality that many disabled people already live full and fulfilling erotic lives. With contributions that foreground the lived experiences, representations, and self-understandings of disabled people as sexual beings, some contributions explore how disabled individuals and communities resist the social, cultural, and political forces that render their sexualities deviant, invisible, or dangerous. Other contributions turn to the urgent task of transforming sex education, critically examining how sex education for disabled people can be radically transformed. Finally, there are a number of pieces that highlight how disabled people navigate the affective, embodied, and increasingly digital landscapes of intimacy and connection. In sum, this volume imagines sexuality as a site of access, interdependence, creativity, and joy, in hopes that it reshapes the broader sexual cultures in which we all participate.

Disabled sexuality has too often been cast as taboo, as disabled people are routinely de-sexualized, infantilized, or positioned as objects of pity and (over)protection. Nevertheless, despite facing numerous obstacles to sexuality, sexual expression, and parenting, individuals with disabilities have consistently showcased resilience, agency, and creativity. Disabilities, Pleasures, and Sexualities: Transforming Perceptions, Cultivating Desires, volume 17 of the Research in Social Science and Disability series, seeks to highlight and celebrate these qualities with contributions that challenge stereotypes, reimagine expressions of sexuality, illuminate aspects of reproduction and parenting, and explore different forms of intimate relationships. They recognize, affirm, and celebrate the reality that many disabled people already live full and fulfilling erotic lives. With contributions that foreground the lived experiences, representations, and self-understandings of disabled people as sexual beings, some contributions explore how disabled individuals and communities resist the social, cultural, and political forces that render their sexualities deviant, invisible, or dangerous. Other contributions turn to the urgent task of transforming sex education, critically examining how sex education for disabled people can be radically transformed. Finally, there are a number of pieces that highlight how disabled people navigate the affective, embodied, and increasingly digital landscapes of intimacy and connection. In sum, this volume imagines sexuality as a site of access, interdependence, creativity, and joy, in hopes that it reshapes the broader sexual cultures in which we all participate.