HOW THIS BOOK DIFFERS FROM OTHER
‘REHABILITATION MANUALS’
This book was written from the ‘bottom up’, working closely with disabled persons and
their families. We believe that those with the most personal experience of disability can and
should become leaders in resolving the needs of the disabled. In fact, the main author of
this book (David Werner) and many of its contributors happen to be disabled. We are neither
proud nor ashamed of this. But we do realize that in some ways our disabilities contribute to
our abilities and strengths.
In many rehabilitation manuals, disabled persons are treated as objects to be worked
upon, to be ‘normalized’ or made as normal as possible. As disabled persons, we object to
attempts by the experts to fit us into the mold of normal. Too often ‘normal’ behavior in our
society is selfish, greedy, narrow-minded, prejudiced—and cruel to those who are weaker
or different from others. We live in a world where too often it is ‘normal’ and acceptable
for the rich to live at the expense of the poor, and for health professionals to earn many
times the wages of those who produce their food but cannot afford their services. We live
on a wealthy planet where most children do not get enough to eat. Where half the people
have never seen a trained health worker, and where poverty is a major cause of disability
and early death. And yet the world’s leaders spend 50 billion dollars every 3 weeks on the
instruments of war—an amount that could provide primary health care to everyone on earth
for an entire year!
Instead of being ‘normalized’ into such an unkind, unfair, and unreasonable social
structure, we disabled persons would do better to join together with all who are
treated unfairly, in order to work for a new social order that is kinder, more just, and
more sane.
This large book, then, is a small tool in the struggle not only for the liberation of the
disabled, but for their solidarity in the larger effort to create a world where more value
is placed on being human than on being ‘normal’—a world where war and poverty and
despair no longer disable the children of today, who are the leaders of tomorrow.
Top-down rehabilitation manuals too often only give orders telling the ‘local trainer’,
family member, and disabled person exactly what they ‘must do’. We feel that this is a
limiting rather than liberating approach, it encourages people to obediently fit the child
into a standard ‘rehabilitation plan’, instead of creating a plan that fits and frees the child.
Again and again we see exercises, lessons, braces, and aids incorrectly, painfully, and
often harmfully applied. This is done both by community rehabilitation workers and by
professionals, because they have been taught to follow standard instructions or pre-
packaged solutions rather than to respond in a flexible and creative way to the needs of
the whole child.
In this book we try not to tell anyone what they must do. Instead we provide
information, explanations, suggestions, examples, and ideas. We encourage an
imaginative, adventurous, thoughtful, and even playful approach. After all, each disabled
child is different and will be helped most by approaches and activities that are lovingly
adapted to her specific abilities and needs.
A 4 ABOUT THIS BOOK