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Marketing of public policies on the Disability Discrimination Act (the UK) (This messages concerns solely with the UK disability law) It was written by Paul Curry that "this leads me to the questions of whether conferences/seminars/information sharing sessions etc. can serve the anti discrimination cause well if they do not cover both and whether we should be encouraging both Acts to be considered (i.e. seeing the whole of the picture rather than one narrow area such as the DDA)" A close reading of the publicity statements on the Disability Discrimination Act (1995) DDA and the mushrooming statements on the recent Special Educational Needs and Disability Act (2001) gives support for the above statement. If these conference papers are given by the representatives/ members of the organisations closely involved in the development of statutes and or codes of practices and or statutory regulations, these organisations may be exposed to the substantial claims that their main purpose to sell these policy developments, rather than giving a full picture of these policies. This then leaves gaps for the informing disabled people about the limitations about these policies. For example, the information on the public domain recent marketing of the SENDA (2001) suggests that disabled students would be able to ask for the court to grant injunctions, besides monetary compensation. For example this means a disabled student who was expelled unlawfully from the University on the disability grounds as found by the courts, then it is suggested that the courts may be able to order the universities to readmit this student into the course, besides the order for monetary awards. The practice on the implementation of the DDA since December 1996 within the employment contexts provides little support for such statements and "interpretations" by those closely involved in these policy developments, based on the analysis of over 200 appellate cases on the DDA at a City University Project. This has public policy implications for informing disabled people about these policy developments if no justification for such statements are provided and further may expose these organisations and their representatives to the provision of the misleading information for commercial purposes. It is also questionable whether such students have resources for years to spend on the courts only to find that they were mislead by those in the trust position and to find that they have no opportunities to continue their studies as their peers. The other issue emerging from this statement is that a conference paper solely on technicalities of the DDA means little if it is presented out of the context. For example it should discuss what these policy developments mean in the nursing education, nursing employment and nursing services based on real life cases rather han based on the good practice culture if this paper is presented at a Nursing Conference. This has been one of the major policy findings from a City University project. Representatives of the organisations closely involved in the policy developments on the DDA and SENDA and on this list are invited to justify such claims in case they do such claims. ________________________________ Ozcan KONUR Postal address: Rehabilitation Resource Centre (Walmsley Building Room W223), City University, Northampton Square, London EC1V 0HB, The United Kingdom. E-mail: [log in to unmask] Research project URL: http://www.student.city.ac.uk/~cx639/index.htm Phone: 020 7040 0271 _________________________________________________________________ Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp ________________End of message______________________ Archives and tools for the Disability-Research Discussion List are now located at: www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/disability-research.html You can JOIN or LEAVE the list from this web page.