This comprehensive volume assesses the relationship between legal rights and disability and the effect of law, legal process and third party professional intervention on the lives of people with disabilities. Stressing the crucial role played by disabled people themselves in fulfilling the promise of the worldwide rights movement, the chapters examine this relationship across a variety of themes, stressing the legal elements of each issue, and the extent to which law can assist in strengthening individual rights in that area. The contributors, who are all either academics or other professional experts in their field, write in a jargon free accessible style. The volume will be of interest to lawyers, human rights activists, health care professionals and to disabled people generally.

The main areas covered in the volume are:

* new perspectives on working in partnership with disabled people;

* the changing attitudes to the rights of people with disabilities across the globe;

* improvements to the rights of disabled people through legal process, using national and international law;

* an examination of the rights and entitlement of disabled people to community care, housing, employment, education, and special services for children;

* disabled people and mental health law;

* messages from disability research for law, practice and reform implications for research.

Preface, Jeremy Cooper. 1. Working in Partnership with Disabled People: New Perspectives for Professionals Within the Social Model of Disability, Clare Picking, Occupational Therapist, Southampton. 2. Changing Attitutdes to the Rights of People with Disabilities in Europe, Lisa Waddington, Lecturer in European Law, Maastricht University. 3. Improving the Civil Rights of People with Disabilities through International Law, Jeremy Cooper. 4. Improving the Civil Rights of People with Disabilities through Domestic Law: A Global Overview, Jeremy Cooper. 5. The Legal Regulation of the Powers and Duties of Local Authorities with Regard to Disabled People, Belinda Schwehr, Solicitor and Law Lecturer, Surrey. 6. The Disability Discrimination Act: An Overview, Catherine Casserley, Legal Officer, Royal National Institute for the Blind. 7. Disability, Housing and Homelessness, Mary Holmes, Principal Lecturer. School of Law, Kingston University. 8. Disability and Mental Health Law, Kate Harrison, Solicitor, Former Legal Officer for MIND. 9. Disabled Children (Still) Invisible Under the Law, Mairian Corker, Senior Research Fellow in Deaf and Disability Studies, University of Central Lancashire, and John Davis, Edinburgh University. 10. Disabled Children and Social Care: Law and Practice, Suzy Braye, Reader in Social Work, Staffordshire University. 11. Clear Voices for Change: Messages from Disability Research for Law, Practice and Reform, Michael Preston-Shoot, Professor of Social Work and Social Care, Liverpool John Moores University. References. Index.