Young Disabled People

Sonali Shah is Nuffield Research Fellow at the Centre for Disability Studies, University of Leeds, UK. She is the author of Career Success of Disabled High-Flyers (2005) and of numerous journal articles on disability, education and work.

• Contents: Introduction, background and policy; Career developments and choices of young people; Young people's aspirations: what are they and why?; Choices and opportunities in mainstream and special education; How families shape the choices of young disabled people; Conclusion: discussion and young people's ideas for change; Bibliography; Index.

'[Sonali Shah] Carefully engages with the accounts of disabled young people, as they negotiate their lives and plan for the future, at a crucial time in UK and European disability policy on education and employment. Shah provides a crafted disability studies analysis, drawing on resources from social policy, sociology, education and social psychology, providing invaluable insights for theory, policy and practice.' Dan Goodley, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK 'There's a good and very important central point: young disabled people continue to face important structural and attitudinal barriers in relation to how they are allowed to imagine their future selves and how they can go beyond that imagining and take their rightful and equal place alongside non-disabled peers. This book makes a useful contribution to that debate.' Journal of Social Policy