Working with individuals with disabilities valerie

RE: SOCW6051(w9): Response to 2 students
Subject
Humanities

Question Description
Respond to at least two colleagues by refuting or supporting either your colleagues' analysis of the marginalization and oppression of individuals with disabilities or supporting or refuting their analysis of the role of the social worker in working with clients with disabilities.

Response to Kimberly

Discussion 1: Ability, Disability, and Erasure

When I finished reading “The Case of Valerie”, I wanted to give her a big hug. One for the mental and physical abuse she’s endured throughout her life and another hug for recognizing she had a situation that needed attention. Valerie’s low self-esteem and low self-concept of herself began way before she got married. Valerie possessed an inner disability where she probably didn’t think much of herself and probably stayed away from people for fear of them disliking her. Along comes a man [who also has mental disabilities] who reeled her in because he smelled fear. He knew he had her wrapped around his finger; therefore, he treated her as he pleased, with constant verbal and physical abuse. When she became physically disabled, her self-esteem went from low to below the grave, because by then, he had brainwashed her into believing nobody would love her.

We see a case of visible and invisible disability. Wendell (2013) factors that construct disabilities from social conditions that leads to illnesses, injuries, and poor physical functioning to cultural factors where some people or groups doesn’t fit “the norm”; poor working conditions can disable a person; architectural flaws such a no wheelchair access, poor communication systems and many more. Some people are physically and psychologically disabled, like Valerie, who remains hidden behind closed doors with her disabilities. Valerie was forced to work from home due to the lack of accessible buildings and perhaps transportation.

Valerie fit the mold that many people face today, mental illness of depression and emotional instability; her physical disability is visible as she lost a leg; therefore, she uses an electric scooter and walker. She lacked self-worth, so it took her a while to realize she needed help, but once her sessions began, she began to unravel the pinned up mental and verbal abuse she endured; surely, some childhood issue came up also. She was a prisoner in her home for fear that people would stare, be rude, or are unable to accommodate her disability.