2.3 Contexts and Environmental Variables

As we have seen  International Classification of Functionality puts the notions of ‘health’ and ‘disability’ in a new light. It acknowledges that every human being can experience a decrement in health and thereby experience some degree of disability. Disability is not something that only happens to a minority of humanity.

The ICF thus ‘mainstreams’ the experience of disability and recognizes it as a universal human experience and by  shifting the focus from cause to impact it places all health conditions on an equal footing allowing them to be compared using a common metric – the ruler of health and disability. Furthermore ICF takes into account the social aspects of disability and does not see disability only as a 'medical' or 'biological' dysfunction. By including contextual factors, in which environmental factors are listed, ICF allows to records the impact of the environment on the person's functioning.[1]

This is important when it comes to analyzing needs and formulating goals for our kids: sometimes it can be easier to interfere with the environment, than with the child.

[1] http://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/ WHO