Timothy Stainton
Wall Associate
Tim is currently Professor at the School of Social Work and Director of the Centre for Inclusion and Citizenship. He has held faculty appointments at the University of Wales Swansea where he was Director of Social Work, McGill University, and was tutor in Social Policy at the London School of Economics. In 2008/9 he was the Sir Allan Sewell Visiting Fellow at Griffith University, Australia.
Prior to his academic career he worked in the field of intellectual disability in a number of roles including as Director of Policy and Programmes for the Ontario Association for Community Living and at the Community Living Society in Vancouver as a service broker working on the deinstitutionalization of provincial institutions.
He is author of numerous works on service and supports for people with intellectual disabilities, disability rights, individualized funding, history, ethics and theory. He is active in the disability rights and community living movements and is a board member of several advocacy organizations. He was a founding member of the International Association for the Scientific Study of Intellectual Disability (IASSID) Special Interest Research group on Ethics.
Tim has lectured and consulted internationally on issues of service delivery, structure, self-determination and individualized funding and other disability related topics for many years.
Primary Recipient Awards
This workshop was held Apr 29 - May 1, 2011.
The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities entered into force on May 3, 2008. Article 12 affirms the rights of persons with disabilities to receive recognition as persons before the law and calls on State Parties to recognize that persons with disabilities enjoy legal capacity on an equal basis with others in all aspects of life and to take appropriate measures to provide access to the support they may require in exercising their legal capacity.
The idea that all persons with disabilities (including those with cognitive impairments) be recognized as persons before the law and enjoy legal capacity challenges one of the fundamental tenets of western moral and legal philosophy: that moral, and by extension legal status, is dependent on having a certain level or type of reason. In essence, Article 12 challenges the basis of law related to all those who have significant cognitive impairments, including those with dementia and those with intellectual and mental disabilities. As this centuries-old divide between legal capacity and incapacity becomes more porous, little is understood about how to recast the criteria of moral and legal personhood and capacity. Knowledge is lacking about appropriate legal, political, and programming responses impacting governments, the justice system, the human services, and the health, financial and legal professions.
This workshop will bring together leading national and international scholars from Law, Disability Studies, Gerontology, Social Work, Ethics, Medicine, Psychology and Philosophy along with key civil society representatives to examine from a ‘ground up’ perspective the issues raised by Article 12.
