Rehabilitation as Planned Social Change: A Conceptual Framework

Abstract

The rehabilitation process is conceptualized as a form of social experience. Three assumptions are made about the purposes, scope and nature of therapeutic intervention during restorative social change: 1) Therapeutic services are required only to the extent that they clearly help to overcome socio-cultural linked with handicapping states; 2) The pathway from disloccttion to reintegration is divided into a succession of phases by a series of emotional and interpersonal crises; 3) The primary service of rehabilitation personnel is to encourage successful management of these transitional changes through a deliberate sequence of role-reforming experiences (resocialization). A theoretical four-phase model is outlined, depicting rehabilitation as a sequence of planned resocializations for the disabled and their significant others from, dislocation to reintearation.