Equality Diversity on Disabled Persons (Essay Sample)

Equality Diversity on Disabled Persons
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Equality Diversity on Disabled Persons
Introduction
Individuals in the society need to be given services from government institutions without any biasness. This means that all people regardless of their gender, religion, age, race or disability should be given equal treatment. It is identified that all human beings are equal irrespective of their background or their physical or mental conditions (Bagihole, 2009, p.76). There are some instances that the people who offer services assume that certain group of people in the society should get better services than others. This is usually based on the class and the social status in the society. This practice is unethical and limits the enjoyment of human rights, which dictates that all people should be treated equally. This is to prevent incidences of some section of the population feeling inferior and left out. It is the role of the government and the public to ensure that these basic rights on human beings are not denied on any individual.
In social and health care sector, the problem of discrimination is common especially to the people with disability when they want to access services. Disability can be in different forms with the most common being physical disability followed by mental disability. Most of the times, the individuals with these kind of disabilities are relatively less helpless than other healthy and normal individuals. This makes them require increased attention from medical practitioners in addition to being assisted in a number of things. Inequality based on disability in the health care sector is unprofessional and does not match with the roles and responsibilities of medical practitioners (Bagihole, 2009, p.87). Disability is not a choice of an individual but a condition that may be related to genetics, accidents or hereditary. Therefore, people with disability should be treated equally and thus get better services as other people. This paper looks at inequality due to disability and how it affects the experience of individuals or groups. Further, the paper uses Personal Cultural Structure model to understand how inequality affects disabled people and the problems associated with the trend. Finally, the paper looks at organizations campaigning against inequality and the services they provide to achieve this objective.
How disability discrimination influence experiences of individuals and groups
Inequality related to disability is influenced by the extent to which the patients can be able to take care of themselves. Individuals who have disabilities which are physical may be prevented by health care management from accessing the health care. This is especially so if the hospital has no special attendants to serve the disabled individuals. The patients are seen as a nuisance to the operations of the hospital and they are regarded as a bother. This is from the fact that the physically disabled persons need to be assigned health practitioners to keep watch on them. This is in addition to ensuring that the things that they may require are provided in time. Disabled patients especially those who have problems in moving about require that the health practitioners carry out activities such as washing them. Some of the practitioners find this unwelcome and this influences their decisions to turn them down from accessing their services (Mental Health Commission, 2012, p.27). The disabled persons thus feel oppressed in that they are denied a chance for better health service based on their disability. This increases their chances of getting depressed and they suffer from lowered self-esteem.
As a group of disabled persons, the individuals may be isolated from the other patients making them feel unwanted by the society. When individuals are not given a chance to interact with others in the hospital set up due to their disability; they feel left out (Mental Health Commission, 2012, p.28). It is common to find incidences that as a group they are taken to a common ward or location where they are not given the necessary attention. The disabled patients most of who may be weak and lack physical capacity to feed themselves may go hungry for hours. It is also common to find incidences when these groups of disabled individuals fail to take medicine in the required time frames. Bringing the disabled individuals together and failing to offer necessary attention may further lead to injuries. This could happen when there are individuals among the group who have mental problems and may start fights. When this kind of a thing happens and the health practitioners are not around, those with physically disability end up suffering more. This is from the fact that they are relatively helpless to defend the selves from injuries and fights.
Structural, cultural and personal impacts on disabled individual and group experiences
In understanding how the inequality related to disability is practiced and spread in social and health sector; a PCS model is relevant. The PCS model is a tool that is used to analyse how personal, cultural and structural factors influence the behaviour and beliefs of people resulting to incidences of inequality and discrimination (Singh, 2012, P.3). Personal discrimination is influenced by actions of individuals who perpetuate behaviours that lead to discrimination. In disability discrimination, personal discrimination is common from the health care practitioners where an individual thinks that disabled individuals are a liability to the hospital. This is from the fact that once a patient is brought to the hospital the individual expected to provide care, gives more attention to the more healthy patients. The individual may also not give the disabled person an ability to get services before other patients, though he or she may be weak or unable to support himself or herself. This attitude of individual’s results to suffering of the disabled who feel helpless and have little they can do to assist them self. This type of discrimination may be out of ignorance or prejudice to certain members in the society, which means that the behaviour may be persistent for relatively a long time.
Cultural discrimination on the other hand is based on the attitudes and the beliefs of the society towards certain people (Singh, 2012, P.3). The cultural may be based on the society or it may be a characteristic of the identified organization. Through cultural discrimination, individuals as a group think that no people are entitled to special favours including in a health care set up. This means that in instances that a person with disability is brought to hospitals, the other patients waiting to be served cannot give him a chance to be served first. There is the cultural believe that people should be served by the medical practitioners on the basis of when they arrived in the hospital. This is discriminatory in that; disabled individuals may not make to wait for long in the queues due to their physical problems. Therefore, it is expected that the patients should offer these individuals and groups to get medical attention first.
Structural discrimination originates from the political, social and economic environment and the power relations as well as process in a given system (Singh, 2012, P.3). Structural discrimination plays a role in discrimination of groups and individuals with disability by looking down on their social status. Individuals with disabilities who come from poor background rarely get adequate services as they are unable to finance them. In some health care structures, it is passed that people should not be treated if they cannot afford to pay for the bills. Therefore, this makes the health care practitioners in such institutions fail to offer necessary services to groups with disability, who most of them have limited funds. The structures of health care set ups are also characterized by differing social classes’ wards and services. This makes the disabled persons fail to get quality treatment because they are also considered to belong to a lower social class in the society. Therefore, through structural discrimination, inequality in health services offered to disabled individuals as well as groups is common. The discrimination leads to suffering of the disabled individuals who may succumb to death in some instances.
Problems related to multifaceted oppression on disabled persons
Discrimination that is related to disability is multifaceted and results to various oppressions on the affected individuals or groups (Thompson, 2012, p.91). One of the oppression on this group is through manipulation of different powers by the health practitioners and the society. The health practitioners, who have expertise power, know that the disabled persons must want to get their services to get well. This makes them use this power to manipulate them through giving the services in prejudiced manners. They understand that the disabled persons are less empowered and they may not be in a position to take legal actions against them. The services therefore given to the disabled person at times are seen as a favour instead of their right. This is because the health practitioners assume that they can decide when to give the services and when to withdraw them. The disabled groups and individuals sometimes suffer from discrimination to an extent they have to beg to get services (Mental Health Commission, 2012, p.31). This kind of behaviour is unacceptable in a civilized society where equality should be upheld on all individuals irrespective of their health status or social status.
Disabled persons further suffer from oppression related to the services offered once admitted in the hospitals (Mental Health Commission, 2012, p.32). The individuals and groups that are characterized by mental health problems are regarded as unequal...