Group Work for All

Abstract

As the leading journal in professional counseling addressing group work, it is imperative that The Journal for Specialists in Group Work (JSGW) cover a wide range of issues and address the various populations who present themselves in group work settings. As an organization, the Association for Specialists in Group Work (ASGW) has led in its focus on diversity, multiculturalism, and international issues. JSGW, its professional journal, has followed this charge, publishing numerous special issues, as well as individual articles, covering the breadth and depth of multicultural and social justice issues. Further, there have been increased calls for wider coverage of these issues, as well as notes for which the journal appears to still lack (Goodrich, 2018). This could not be more true than in the area of disability, which has received sparse coverage in JSGW. Today, an understanding of disability is critical because the population of people with disabilities is one of the fastest growing minority groups, increasing from 11.9% in 2010 to 12.8% in 2016 in the United States (Kraus, Lauer, Coleman, & Houtenville, 2018). Historically segregated, people with disabilities are increasingly able to participate in society because of civil rights protections that emerged from the 1970’s disability rights movement (Hartley, 2018). Perhaps one of the most important moments was April 5, 1977, when a national group of disability rights advocates organized simultaneous protests in nine cities to demand the enforcement of civil rights protections (Longmore, 2003; Shapiro, 1994). From these protests emerged a larger cultural movement focused on equal employment, greater political participation, and better community services (Campbell & Oliver, 1996; Longmore, 2003). While people with disabilities are more integrated than ever before in our society, the disability is an experience typically misunderstood by many, including professional counselors who often have limited experience and training around disability. While almost everyone will experience changes in ability and functioning with age, and temporary and permanent impairments are a common part of the human experience, misconceptions about disability are often a result of ableism – the notion that disability is much more than a psychological, physiological or anatomical difference, but rather, a social construction used to define some groups of people as normal contrasted against the abnormal. A construct similar to racism and sexism, ableism is the perceived inferiority of people with disabilities and preference for able-bodiedness. Historically and currently, ableism has intersected with other significant social justice issues because it has been used to justify inequality for people with disabilities as well as other groups of people. Indeed, scholars have argued that the ways in which disability is discussed provides a lens to see how disability is understood within our larger society. Scholars, for instance, have noted how disability has been used to justify inequality for not only people with disabilities, but also other groups of people, including women, African Americans, and immigrants (Block, Balcazar, & Keys, 2001). In the mid-nineteenth century, a common justification of slavery was that African Americans lacked sufficient intelligence to participate on an equal basis in society (Baynton, 2013). THE JOURNAL FOR SPECIALISTS IN GROUP WORK 2019, VOL. 44, NO. 4, 223–227 https://doi.org/10.1080/01933922.2019.1670024