‘Rights indictors: Using disabled children’s childhood studies'

This paper asks how disabled children’s childhood studies can inform the development of child rights indicators. The use of child development and the medical model of disability is generally justified on the grounds that they enable us to identify children’s needs and plan early intervention, yet disabled children have continued to experience segregation and inequality in all areas of life and into adulthood. This paper introduces disabled children’s childhood studies (DCCS) as an alternative approach. DCCS demand a shift away from the concerns of service providers and the view that disabled children have ‘problems.’ Rather DCCS sees disabled children as having childhoods and the right to (re)imagine their futures beyond the limits imposed on them by the requirements to meet the mythical norms of child development (Curran and Runswick-Cole 2013; Runswick-Cole, Curran and Liddiard 2017 in press). The principles of child rights indicators, such as participation and the joint use of qualitative and quantitative data, suggests a synergy and opportunity to a end to disabled children’s rights and also ques on the normative frameworks used to underpin them across child popula ons locally and globally.