Empowerment and the architecture of rights based social policy

This article considers what the notions of empowerment, rights and citizenship imply in the way of structures and policies. It argues that a coherent model is emerging with recognizable elements. The article begins with a brief discussion of some background and theoretical questions. It then examines four elements: support for people to articulate their claims; support for people to identify, obtain and manage supports necessary to actualize their claims; providing control over resources; and governance. Examples will be drawn primarily from the UK and British Columbia, Canada to illustrate the elements. The article then looks at some of the issues related to successful implementation of a rights or empowerment based model of policy and structures for supporting people labelled as having a learning disability.