One of the weaknesses of the social model is that it fails to offer a complete understanding of impairment as an identity and as a practical concern. While many disabled people do not wish to be ‘cured’ of their impairments, they clearly wish to stay as healthy as they are able to and manage their conditions. Therefore some interaction with medical professionals is needed within a social model context, where the goal of utopian cure is replaced my reasonable and practical health management. I would be foolish not to take antibiotics for a chest infection out of some need to retain my impairment identity.

To rationalise medical intervention, it is important to see that any treatment or therapy aims to relieve specific symptoms as to oppose to miraculously cure something broken as nothing in this world can be truly fixed but simply repaired to a weakened standard or replaced. In understanding this, it is possible to see medical interventions in a manner compatible with the social model.

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