This classic text has been essential reading for students and professionals in the field of social work and disability for twenty years. Extensively revised and updated, the third edition examines the ways in which disabled people have increasingly been able to manage and develop their own services. It reconstructs social work practice in the light of these and the latest policy changes, stressing throughout the importance to practice of thinking critically about the welfare response to disability.

Michael Oliver was the first, and only, Professor of Disability Studies in the UK, at University of Greenwich, until he retired. He is Chair of the Research Advisory Group of the British Council of Disabled People, and Executive Editor of Disability and Society. Bob Sapey is Senior Lecturer in Applied Social Science at Lancaster University.