British Council of Organizations of Disabled People (originating from the Union of Physically Impaired Against Segregation (UPIAS)) definition:

Impairment      lacking part or all, or having a defective limb, organ or mechanism of the body.

Disability          the disadvantage or restriction of activity caused by a contemporary social organization which takes little or no account of people who have physical impairments and thus excludes them from participation in the mainstream of social activities physical disability is therefore a particular form of social oppression.

A brief look at the history of the care and education of children and young people with physical and/or sensory disabilities will show the reader very quickly that it is peppered with, at best, misunderstanding and, at worst, downright cruelty. Listening to the stories of people who were the subject of care and education in the 1940s and 1950s, it becomes clear that it was not so much the physical separation of children from their families that caused grief but the insensitive and cruel treatment of children and young people who were disabled by the people who worked in and ran those institutions. Even into the 1960s young people with disabilities were contained in medical and institutional ‘care’ settings where their potential as human beings was largely ignored. Eventually in the 1960s, the setting up of Junior and Senior Training Centres within the Health Service at least recognized that young people with disabilities were ‘trainable’. The setting up of the Spastics Society (now SCOPE) in the 1960s was a response by a small number (that grew to a large number) of parents whose children’s educative potential was being largely ignored by the health and educational services of the day. In the early 1970s legislation came into being that transferred responsibility for disabled youngsters from health to education, though it was still to be a while before children and young people with disabilities were felt to be ‘educable’ in the fullest sense of the word.