Submission ID 130367
| Issue/Objective | Black and racialized disabled women often navigate overlapping systems of oppression while providing unpaid care to their children with disabilities, yet their experiences remain largely absent from Canadian health, rehabilitation, and caregiving research. Existing scholarship has centered middle-class, able-bodied caregiving norms and positioned disabled people primarily as care recipients. Within rehabilitation, caregiver-mediated interventions are frequently upheld as a "gold standard," relying on an implicit "assumed caregiver" shaped by colonial norms that privilege able-bodiedness, whiteness, and socioeconomic stability. This study examines how Black and racialized disabled women in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA) experience caregiving while navigating health, education, and social service systems. Aligned with the conference theme Equity in Action, it centers marginalized caregivers as knowledge holders and interrogates who is recognized, valued, and supported within health systems. |
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| Methodology/Approach | Situated in the GTHA, this study uses qualitative narrative inquiry. Approximately 10-12 Black and racialized disabled women providing unpaid care to children with disabilities will be recruited through purposive and snowball sampling. Data will be collected through semi-structured interviews (60-90 minutes), conducted virtually or in person. Interviews will be transcribed verbatim and analyzed using reflexive thematic analysis within a narrative inquiry framework, guided by Critical Disability Studies, Critical Race Theory, and intersectionality. The study will take place over 12 months, including recruitment, data collection, analysis, and knowledge mobilization. |
| Results | Findings are expected to demonstrate how structural inequities - including racism, ableism, and socioeconomic constraints - shape caregiving roles, access to services, and interactions with rehabilitation systems. Anticipated insights include tensions between dominant caregiver-mediated models and participants' lived realities, systemic barriers such as fragmented services and limited recognition of disabled caregivers, and the forms of resistance, knowledge, and care practices developed in response. |
| Discussion/Conclusion | This research calls for a shift toward structurally responsive, equity-oriented health and rehabilitation systems that move beyond individualized caregiver responsibility. Policy implications include enhanced caregiver supports, coordinated cross-sector services, and the meaningful inclusion of marginalized caregivers in decision-making. Scalable across contexts, this work contributes to global health efforts to build resilient systems by centering lived expertise and demonstrating that meaningful change is context-driven and led by those most impacted. |
| Presenters and Affiliations | Deja Forde-Dixon University of Toronto Deja Forde-Dixon University of Toronto |
