Health Society and Policy – serie

The defining assumptions and assumed definition of the welfare state

Takes us from the most private aspects of sexuality into the arena of public policy and state regulation

Douglas Biklen closely examines the experiences of six families in which children with disabilities are full participants in family life in order to understand how people who have been labeled disabled might become full participants in the other areas of society as well. He focuses on the contradictions between what some families have achieved, what they want for their children, and what society and its social policies allow. He demonstrates how the principles of inclusion that govern the lives of these families can be extended to education, community life, and other social institutions. The parents who tell their stories here have actively sought inclusion of their children in regular schools and community settings; several have children with severe or multiple disabilities. In discussing issues such as normalization, acceptance, complete schooling, circles of friends, and community integration, these parents describe the challenge and necessity of their children's "leading regular lives." In the series Health, Society, and Policy, edited by Sheryl Ruzek and Irving Kenneth Zola.

Over 200 in-depth interviews with heavy users document the dangers of cocaine, but the authors contend that the national hysteria over it is largely unfounded

This rich collection of essays presents a new vision of adolescent sexuality shaped by a variety of social factors: race and ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, physical ability, and cultural messages propagated in films, books, and within families. The contributors consider the full range of cultural influences that form a teenager's sexual identity and argue that education must include more than its current overriding message of denial hinged on warnings of HIV and AIDS infection and teenage pregnancy. Examining the sexual experiences, feelings, and development of Asians, Latinos, African Americans, gay man and lesbians, and disabled women, this book provides a new understanding of adolescent sexuality that goes beyond the biological approach all too often simplified as "surging hormones." In the series Health, Society, and Policy, edited by Sheryl Ruzek and Irving Kenneth Zola.

During the Rubella Syndrome epidemic of the 1960s, many children were born deaf, blind, and mentally disabled. David Goode has devoted his life and career to understanding such people's world, a world without words, but not, the author confirms, one without communication. This book is the result of his studies of two children with congenital deaf-blindness and mental retardation.Goode spent countless hours observing, teaching, and playing with Christina, who had been institutionalized since age six, and Bianca, who remained in the care of her parents. He also observed the girls' parents, school, and medical environments, exploring the unique communication practices—sometimes so subtle they are imperceptible to outsiders—that family and health care workers create to facilitate innumerable every day situations. A World Without Words presents moving and convincing evidence that human beings both with and without formal language can understand and communicate with each other in many ways.Through various experiments in such unconventional forms of communication as playing guitar, mimicking, and body movements like jumping, swinging, and rocking, Goode established an understanding of these children on their own terms. He discovered a spectrum of non-formal language through which these children create their own set of symbols within their own reality, and accommodate and maximize the sensory resources they do have. Ultimately, he suggests, it is impractical to attempt to interpret these children's behaviors using ideas about normal behavior of the hearing and seeing world.

A memoir of the author's experience as a profoundly deaf infant who became an expert lipreader, and who never learned sign language or met another deaf person until her mid-thirties. It follows her story as she made it through college, to become a corporate litigator.

Now that curb cuts, braille elevator buttons, and closed caption television are commonplace, many people assume that disabled people are now full participants in American society. This book tells a rather different story. It tells how America's disabled mobilized to effect sweeping changes in public policy, not once but twice, and it suggests that the struggle is not yet over. The first edition of From Good Will to Civil Rights traced the changes in federal disability policy, focusing on the development and implementation of Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. Richard K. Scotch's extensive interviews with policymakers, leaders of the disability rights movement, and other advocates, supplemented the sketchy official history of the legislation with the detailed, behind-the-scenes story, illuminating the role of the disability rights movement in shaping Section 504. Charting the shifts in policy and activist agendas through the 1990's, this new edition surveys the effects and disappointments associated with the Americans with Disabilities Act, passed in 1990, in the context of the continuing movement to secure civil rights for disabled people.