Sara Ryan

This empirically grounded book presents a critical, interdisciplinary perspective on social and cultural issues related to the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities. Through an exploration of healthcare, love and intimacy, pregnancy and childbirth, housing, employment, and food the book highlights the enduringly impoverished lives and premature deaths people labelled with learning disabilities experience globally and suggests that such structural violence amounts to social murder.Through the lens of critical disability studies, the book links the debates around learning disabilities to the larger framework of deinstitutionalisation. It takes a closer look at the label “learning disability”, which remains associated with stigma and shame, and advances comprehension of how and why it is that the lives of this group of people are systematically constrained and shortened. The book further identifies recommendations that can be utilised for challenging and changing these circumstances.It is essential reading for those involved in social and cultural issues related to the lives of people with learning disabilities, and also beneficial for advanced students in sociology, anthropology, psychology, allied health sciences, and other related disciplines. It will also be valuable for researchers and health and social care professionals seeking critical insights about their work.

This empirically grounded book presents a critical, interdisciplinary perspective on social and cultural issues related to the health and wellbeing of people with learning disabilities. Through an exploration of healthcare, love and intimacy, pregnancy and childbirth, housing, employment, and food the book highlights the enduringly impoverished lives and premature deaths people labelled with learning disabilities experience globally and suggests that such structural violence amounts to social murder.Through the lens of critical disability studies, the book links the debates around learning disabilities to the larger framework of deinstitutionalisation. It takes a closer look at the label “learning disability”, which remains associated with stigma and shame, and advances comprehension of how and why it is that the lives of this group of people are systematically constrained and shortened. The book further identifies recommendations that can be utilised for challenging and changing these circumstances.It is essential reading for those involved in social and cultural issues related to the lives of people with learning disabilities, and also beneficial for advanced students in sociology, anthropology, psychology, allied health sciences, and other related disciplines. It will also be valuable for researchers and health and social care professionals seeking critical insights about their work.

Alex Eager lives in Faillin, OR with her grandmother, a retired librarian. Life should be great for Alex, since she finally worked up the courage to ask her best friend PJ if they could be more than friends and she said yes. But their new relationship will have to be long distance, because PJ is moving. On top of that, Alex is worried that something is wrong with her increasingly forgetful grandmother. And to make matters worse, Faillin is holding a referendum on library funding, and things aren’t looking good. Will anything good for Alex ever last? Mountain Upside Down is a beautifully crafted story of a thirteen-year-old girl finding her place in her family and her community. It’s a queer-positive story that doesn’t centre coming out. It’s a story of a library’s role in a community that doesn’t feature book banning. And it’s a story of long-held family secrets and resentment that focuses not on final resolution but learning how to communicate again.

After moving to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, poet Sara Ryan found herself immersed in the isolated spaces of the North: the cold places that never thawed, the bleak expanses of snow. These poems have teeth, bones, and blood—they clack and bruise and make loud sounds. They interrogate self-preservation, familial history, extinction, taxidermy, and animal and female bodies. In between these lines, in warm places where blood collects, animals stay hidden and hunted, a girl looks loneliness dead in the eye, and wolves come out of the woods to run across the frozen water of Lake Superior.

This is a book written to celebrate the humanity of people, and to share experiences of what brilliant care and support can look like for families with learning disabled or autistic children and adults.Sara Ryan steers clear of jargon and 'doublespeak' to conjure authentic experiences of families. Speaking with families and professionals, she conveys the love, laughter and joy which binds families and the harsh realities many face; of separation from loved ones, substandard care and frustration and helplessness in the face of inflexible services. From their experiences, Sara looks to capture those pockets of brilliance that families have encountered, and which outstanding practitioners have pioneered, for us all to learn from.We know so much about what support and services should look like in order to enable flourishing lives - this book aims to help families and professionals to achieve it, together.

On July 4th 2013, Connor Sparrowhawk, also known as Laughing Boy or LB, was found dead in a specialist NHS unit. Connor, who had autism and epilepsy, had a seizure while in the bath and no member of staff was on hand to stop him from drowning. An entirely preventable death.Sara Ryan presents a frank, sometimes funny and touching account of her son's early life and preventable death and the unfolding #JusticeforLB campaign. This serves as a wake-up call to all of us and asks: can we really claim that we respect the life and dignity of learning disabled people?

Battle Hall Davies is sure of some things: She's going to Reed this fall; she loves girls; and her older brother, Nick, outshines her. He ran away four and a half years ago; now he's tracked her down, and she's spending the summer at Forest House, where he lives in Portland. It is a summer of surprises. Battle is swept into Forest House's community Shakespeare production, their all-night card games, and the arms of her new housemate, Meryl. As the weeks pass, Battle realizes that Nick isn't who she thought he was - and she isn't who she thought she was, either.

Founded in 1995, the Internet Public Library (IPL) was the first virtual public library created exclusively to serve the online community. In this guide, the founding members deliver practical advice on issues related to providing library and information services on the Internet, including: technical support; maintenance; understanding users; site design and organization; funding; and access issues. Also featured are step-by-step instructions for assembling and maintaining collections of networked resources, adding new resources and original content, adapting sources to a web environment, and developing remote services. Profiles of successful services such as IPL's e-mail based "Ask a Question", ready reference and online text collections complete the guide.