Any suggestions on how to empower people with disabilities?

You are welcome.

Thank you for the suggestions!

Effective social work practice with people with disabilities requires a re-focused conceptual framework supporting and promoting self-determination. This framework must be designed to enable people with disabilities to 1) expand their range of options and choices; 2) prepare them to be more effective in dealings with professionals, bureaucrats, and agencies that often do not understand nor appreciate their heightened need for self-determination; 3) mobilize and help groups of people with disabilities to consider policy and program alternatives that can improve their situation.
Direct practice with clients with disabilities will remain a primary activity of health and rehabilitation social workers (with perhaps greater secondary emphasis on mezzo and macro skills). However, this practice must increasingly emphasize empowerment objectives rather than compliance with medically prescribed treatment plans and traditional psycho-social clinical interventions. Fostering the independence and empowerment of people with disabilities requires enabling them to become motivated and skilled at helping themselves. Independent living services, inspired by the disability rights movement, emphasize concepts that rely on preparing consumers to help themselves.