The risk of good intentions: How professional systems shape risk, respect, and outcomes for people with disability

Abstract

Disabled people frequently navigate systems that frame risk as something to be avoided or controlled. While often grounded in good intentions, these systems—through policy design, professional practices, and cultural assumptions, can restrict autonomy, stifle participation, and disrupt opportunities for ordinary flourishing.

In this qualitative study, I draw on Critical Disability Theory, Human Rights Approaches, and Hope Theory to explore how disabled people experienced and resisted risk-averse systems to live the lives they wanted. In-depth interviews with 24 people with physical disability aged 12-56 years, and 4 parents of adolescents with disability were included in the analysis.

The findings are presented through three interconnected results chapters. Chapter 4 reveals how policy enacted through the everyday decisions of professionals created barriers that limited choice, undermined autonomy, and disrupted opportunities for ordinary flourishing. Chapter 5 identifies four interrelated strategies—becoming proud, understanding rights, reframing risk, and building wise networks—used to reclaim agency and forge pathways in risk-averse environments. Chapter 6 distinguishes operational respect from genuine respect. In the final chapter, I conclude with a fresh theoretical model of risk and respect in disability practice and call for structural reform grounded in rights, recognition, and lived expertise.