Personal Account

Date01 December 1988
Published date01 December 1988
DOI10.1177/026455058803500421
Subject MatterArticles
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Community Service Volunteers, Merseyside
Probation Service, The Spastics Society, This
is I&Mr
Right at Granada TV, the Greater Man-
chester Coalition for Disabled People, The
Association of Disabled Professionals and
anybody else who might help.
Defence Mechanism
PERSONAL ACCOUNT
The most important letter of the campaign
was the reply my GP received from the Civil
Service Medical Adviser. It stated that I could
Discrimination and Disability
not be a probation officer, because ‘she would
Josephine Passey, probation trainee,
not be able to defend herself in a physical en-
describes her battle
counter and that she would have
to overcome
difficulty in
discrimination on grounds of handicap.
communicating not only with her clients but also
with attending courts’. The letter continues:
From the age of 18 I wanted to be a proba-
’While I
tion officer. I
am
full of admiration for Miss
got
Passey’s
s
a degree, spent 10 months
spirit and the way she has striven to overcome
as a Community Service Volunteer in a Proba-
her difficulties I still think that work as a probation
tion Hostel in Liverpool, worked for a year as
officer is not suitable for her.’ The letter ends:
a Volunteer Co-ordinator in a hospital, got a
’I hope perhaps you will be able to discuss the
place on the MA/CQSW course at Nottingham
matter with Miss Passey and help her to realise
University. The University recommended me
that there are other forms of social work available
to the Home
Office for probation sponsorship.
for her but we feel for her own sake she would
That’s where my battle began.
be better not to consider work as a probation
officer’.
Dislocated Thinking
The Home Secretary in a later letter assured my
MP that this doctor
On the health declaration form I
was
wrote that
&dquo;
I had ataxia type cerebral palsy and congenital
’well aware of the problems and particular needs t
dislocated hips, but that I could walk, manage
of the disabled, having served as a member of a
J
...

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