How can social workers help in building disability communities?

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Thank you! The suggestions are really useful.

Direct services social workers need to be responsive to issues such as the isolation and lack of group consciousness that many people with disabilities experience. These feelings often derive from limited contact with other people with disabilities. People with recently acquired disabilities need to interact with empowered people with disabilities. Creating linkages with natural support systems such as family, church groups, and fraternal and social organizations is encouraged. Such natural gatherings of networks of individuals with similar characteristics and a desire for empowerment did not exist among people with disabilities until recently. In some communities, independent living centers have been organized, produced, and administered by and for people with disabilities, and they often collaborate with more advocacy-oriented organizations. They sponsor and produce newsletters, newspapers, electronic bulletin board services, and internet newsgroups. Social workers must be familiar with such functional communities to link their clients to them. This requires more than a general awareness that such sources exist. Social workers must also have community liaison skills to create and maintain linkages and networks between such groups, services, and their own health services organizations.