Childhood Disability and Disabled Childhoods

Existing research approaches to childhood disability have compounded a view of disabled children as passive and dependent. Moreover, the voices of disabled children themselves have frequently been excluded. Research agendas have been preoccupied with impairment, vulnerability and service usage. As a consequence, they have often concealed the role of disabled children as social actors, negotiating complex identities within a disabling environment. In order to understand the experience of disabled children it is necessary to engage simultaneously with new approaches to disability and with new approaches to childhood.