| Summary: | 博士 === 國立中正大學 === 社會福利學系暨研究所 === 100 === The aim of this study is to examine the transportation policy and its implementation in Leeds, UK, through the lens of the social model of disability. My main study population focus on the local elderly residents and disabled people. By interviewing with five related staff involved in decision making and affiliated to different transport units, and with four other transport users over 60, the analyses of this study are benefited substantially from the comparison and contrast between the users’ first-hand experiences and the policy makers’ blueprint in theory. The ideal of the social model is hard to be fulfilled by the direct payment program due to the crisis of the social welfare state. Among all transportation policies, the scheme of direct payments is regarded as one of the most workable ways to guarantee the transport accessibility for the senior and disabled people promised in Social Model. Affected by nationwide fiscal difficulties, the local government is handed over more authority to implement transport policies. However, confined to its limited resource, the program encounters problems to be accomplished or is even postponed timelessly. Moreover, the implementation of the transport policy is key to ensure the quality in all spheres of everyday life for the senior and disabled people on the daily basis. However, lacking communication between engineers and users extends the gap between theoretical goals and the reality. To categorize the senior from disabled people helps little to enhance accessibility in making transport policies. The perspective of the social model foregrounds a very fact that either of these two groups is isolated from the social participation by the same reason of environmental barriers rather than by the variety of disability. The differential policy ignores their immobility in common. As the result, it cannot remove but intensifies stereotypes or stigma upon these people respectively. Rather than reducing social, environmental factors that are responsible for the immobility of the elderly as well as disabled people, the scheme of direct payments instead puts them in an isolated circumstance of confronting transport inaccessibility alone. As an important indicator of making transportation accessible to all, despite this scheme unexpectedly drifts from the ideal of self-directed support central at the heart of the social model, it brings the double role of social welfare department to the fore in terms of transporting transportation services. The gatekeeper, on the one hand, must guard the limited resources from being wasted; on the other, has to help an applicant receive all kinds of services he or she needs.
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