The Nordic welfare model, although not without critique, is often lauded for its ability to achieve social integration and for maintaining a relatively high level of social and economic equity amongst the population. One of the key ways in which it does this is through the provision of services aimed at those who would otherwise be socially disadvantaged due to material depravation, disability, or similar. Disability policy is a key area where Nordic governments seek to intervene in this arena, and most governments in this region use the ‘Nordic relational understanding’ of disability that ‘focuses on the interplay between the person and the societal surroundings’ (21). This is fundamentally the application of a social model of disability, where disability arises from the inability of the wider environment to meet the needs of the whole population; it also places an emphasis on disability as context specific and relative, with what counts as ‘disabled’ in some sense arbitrary. Disability welfare is underpinned by a strong commitment to equal rights and opportunities for all citizens, with policy aimed at enabling ‘disabled people to live a normal life and to participate in society’ (22) – a critical reader of such policy might ask ‘normal for whom’? One of the main impacts of this has been the withdrawal of institutional care and specialist services and an emphasis on making mainstream settings (such as school) more inclusive. As the editors of this volume and the leaders of a research project on this topic note, practice has not always kept up with policy.
The goal of Childhood and Disability in the Nordic Countries is to bring together authors exploring the nature of disability, disability services, and disability policy in the Nordic region, with a particular focus on disabled children. The book asks how this model for both understanding the nature of disability and the provision of services for disabled people shapes the experiences of those living within Nordic societies, teases out differences across individual nations, and seeks to contribute a Nordic perspective to a wider debate on the construction and experience of disability in a European context. Across four sections and 14 chapters, authors bring a range of perspectives to this topic from the representation of and responses to disability in government policy, law, and children’s literature; to the experiences of a range of disabled children, including teenagers, refugees and migrants, those in mainstream settings and those engaging with specialist support services; to disability as an ethical issue. It is organised thematically.
The first section looks at ‘theories and history’ over three chapters, including a general literature review on the topic, with a particular focus on the intersection of childhood and disability studies; an extended discussion of the development of Nordic disability policy over the last five decades; and a very interesting discussion by Simo Vehmas on ethical considerations in the formation of disability policy, particularly for children. Part two is grouped under the heading ‘Identity and Images’ and looks at out how children construct identity, view their bodies in that process, and are themselves represented. The first three chapters in this section are based on interviews with different populations, incorporating a longitudinal study with a family where all members have a mild intellectual disability; an exploration of teenagers with physical disabilities’ relationship to their bodies and how they negotiated ageing and adolescence; and analysis of a series of interviews with Norwegian immigrants with disabled children and the service providers who work with them. The final chapter in this section provides an analysis of the representation of children with disabilities in Icelandic children’s literature. Each chapter destabilises the concrete boundaries between categories of disabled and non-disabled through giving voice to groups of disabled people who emphasise what they have in common with the wider population, rather than what sets them apart. As Anders Gustavsson and Catarina Nybery explicitly note, it is perhaps more useful to use a model of disability that emphasises it as one of a number of overlapping and fluid social identities, rather than a key signifier of self (70).
Section three focuses on ‘Interaction and Inclusion’, beginning with a chapter on social inclusion as a theoretical concept and social practice, particularly when applied to children. It teases out some of the presumptions about what social inclusion should like for children (all playing together, for example), without reflecting on the nature of children’s social interactions, including their desires and personalities. The following three chapters provide empirical examples of disabled children in inclusive contexts and explore the relative success of environments at enabling children to achieve. Borgum Ytterhus explores parental satisfaction with daycare centres providing inclusive childcare, noting that provision is mixed but also that parents often want different things from inclusion. The following two chapters compare the life courses of disabled and non-disabled children, the first focusing on computer use and the second on children’s social life more broadly. A key finding here is that access to the Internet provides a central role in ensuring disabled children have active social lives that they do not have access to in ‘real world’ contexts.
The final section looks at ‘Families and Services’, with three chapters presenting interviews with parents of disabled children about their interaction with state services. Whilst exploring different national contexts (Norway and Iceland) and social groups (one chapter focuses on immigrant families, for example), these authors report a consistent difficulty amongst families with getting access to information about services, and about accessing the services themselves, coupled with reasonably good service once they finally make it through the bureaucratic morass – one suspects a picture that could be replicated across Europe. As a study that focuses on children, this section is a useful reminder of the ways in which disabled children are sited in families that often provide the difficult advocacy necessary to ensure they play a full part in society. In this, it provides a compelling critique of the application of the vision provided in the Nordic model for disability.
The collection is topped and tailed by an introduction and conclusion that draw out the key themes in the volume. There is an emphasis across much of the volume on providing empirical evidence of the experiences of disabled children and their families in a Nordic context, which in some chapters led to the data being undertheorised. This was disappointing as the rich material pointed to the possibilities for these findings to contribute to the wider theoretical debate. Overall, however, this collection provides a useful addition to the wider European literature, helping to establish the successes and limitations of the Nordic model, as well as providing empirical examples to aid comparative research.
Department of History, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, Australia
[email protected]
© 2016 Katie Barclay
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09687599.2016.1208982