Building Legal Capacity and social networks among caregivers of Persons with Intellectual or Development Disabilities (PwIDDs) for Social Transformation

Abstract

We are living in a period of transformation, with new paradigms arising in the area of human rights, knowledge, and networking. The Persons with Intellectual or Development Disabilities (PwIDDs) face discrimination, denial, stigmatization and they remain as the most marginalized in the society. To change this scenario, co-building is needed for Social Workers to work with caregivers of PwIDDs to bring transformation, by enabling them to recognize the legal capacity to attain social, educational and economic inclusion through social networks. To bring social transformation, the researcher did a study 60 caregivers of PwIDDs at Madurai to initially know the level of awareness on legislative provisions and social networks among caregivers by adopting simple random sampling technique. Quasi Experimental Research design was used. It was found that majority of the caregivers were unaware of legislative provisions and social networks for them. So, an awareness session was conducted for caregivers of PwIDDs, on legal capacity building and they were linked with social networks to benefit each other. The post evaluation results showed that the level of awareness on legal capacity for PwIDDs and social networking was improved among caregivers. The research study suggests that social transformation could be achieved by co-building with caregivers of PwIDDs, for transformation of the marginalized in the society, to have inclusiveness of PwIDDs by building legal capacity and social networks.