Social work practices towards people with disabilities in Portugal: A reflectiveness proposal for conscious interventions and social work training

ABSTRACT

This article compiles reflections and discussions derived from a research made in Portugal in 2018, in which professional practices implemented by social workers towards disability were approached. In order to understand the models of disability applied by practitioners within organisations whose main service users are people disabilities, some questions about training and social work education arose. Using a qualitative methodology with a hermeneutic perspective, the study collected the voices of eight social workers from six organisations and their service users contacted through the Observatory of Disability and Human Rights at the University of Lisbon. Results presented in this document correspond to an analysis of the practices in accordance to the type of organization in which social workers were working for. Discussions revolved around micro, meso and macro variants in which personal believes, institutional discourses and sociocultural constructions were explored. Finally, implications and recommendations for social work were presented using as a framework critical disability studies, critical social work and a human rights approach.

KEYWORDS:

• Models of disability
• practices of social work
• human rights
• institutionalized systems
• reflective practices and education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

María Alejandra Acosta-Jiménez

María Alejandra Acosta-Jiménez is a doctoral student in the third year of the Social Policy Program at the University of Lisbon in Portugal. She holds a master’s degree in Advanced Development in Social Work-Erasmus Mundus Advances, from the University of Lincoln (United Kingdom) and Aalborg University (Denmark) and has a degree in social work from the University of La Salle (Colombia).  Currently, she is an external researcher of the group Discapacidad, Políticas Públicas, y Justicia Social, at Universidad Nacional de Colombia. She is a fellow in the European Disability Expertise programme in Portugal coordinated by the Centro Interdisciplinar de estudos de género, at the University of Lisbon, Portugal.