Chapter 16: Individuals With Disabilities: Using Social Role Valorization for Ensuring Creative Employment Opportunities

Individuals with disabilities have typically had to deal with strong negative biases, stereotypes, discriminatory practices, and mistaken or invalid assumptions and attitudes from folks without disabilities. Negative perceptions can easily lead to social and societal devaluation and stigma. A population that is devalued often then experiences rejection or exclusion, and this is what the disabled community commonly experiences. Under these circumstances, the disabled person’s weaknesses become the focus rather his skills or strengths. This in turn can limit or eliminate various other opportunities for the disabled including employment and socializing opportunities. In recent years, a new concept has emerged that guides service providers in the way they frame service delivery for the disabled. This concept is called social role valorization (SRV) and underscores that folks with disabilities also have multiple valued social roles. These valued social roles can include parent, spouse, family member, employee, teacher, college graduate, homeowner, business operator and others. Organizations that deliver services to the disabled population likewise are assuming many different roles including advocator, educator, community leader, trainer, employment advisor and others. Educating both the general and business community about the realities of the disabled population is an important mandate.