According to Mullaly social democracy occupies a wide area on the political spectrum, bordering on liberalism at one end and Marxism at the other end. (p.119) For this blog I want to look at the affects of poverty on persons with mental disabilities which is a social issue that ties into social democracy beliefs. Social democrats stress three central values which are equality, freedom, and fellowship. (Mullaly, p.122) But the primary value is equality, which rests on four interrelated grounds which are social integration, economic efficiency, natural rights, and individual self-realization. (Mullaly, p.122)
I think that everything I have read on poverty is pretty much summed up in a quote from Dr. Dennis Raphael. “Poverty directly harms the health of those with low-incomes while income inequality affects the health of all Canadians through the weakening of social infrastructure and the destruction of social cohesion.” (Let’s Do Something About Poverty, 2010) Poverty not only affects the persons going through poverty, it affects the rest of society. I truly believe that as a society if we have person’s living on the streets and living through these awful conditions as a community and society as a whole we are not doing our jobs. So often I have heard people complain about their tax money going to undeserving people who just need to get a job. But the reality is we don’t know how or why person’s get into the situations that they do. I think before I started writing this article, the definition of poverty was something that I struggled with a little bit. The best definition I could find was that “poverty is often defined as the lack of sufficient income to provide for the basic necessities of life, consistent with the norms of the society which one lives.”
I found a short research review which evaluates the significant association between poverty and the prevalence of intellectual disabilities. (Wiley-Liss, 2007) This review split up the evidence in two ways. The first being that “poverty causes intellectual disabilities, an effects mediated through the association between poverty and exposure to a range of environmental and psychosocial hazards”. (Wiley-Liss, 2007) “The second distinct process is families supporting a child with intellectual disabilities and adults with intellectual disabilities are at increased risk of experiencing poverty due to the financial and social impact of caring and the exclusion of people with intellectual disabilities from the workforce.” (Wiley-Liss, 2007) The article also goes on to talk about the importance of discussing preventative approaches that look at the health and social inequalities experienced by person’s with intellectual disabilities.
I think that we need to be a more proactive society in a lot of our social issues, we need to make Canada a better place to live for everyone!
Alyssa V
References
Mullaly, B. (2007). The Social Democratic Paradigm. In B. Mullaly, The New Structural
Social Work: Third Edition (pp. 119-122). Oxford University Press.
Let’s Do Something About Poverty, 2010
2007 Wiley-Liss, Inc. MRDD Research Reviews 2007;13:107–113.
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