sandr059

In my last blogpost I talked about what the research evidence does and doesn’t say about the lives of people with learning disabilities living in different kinds of places. I also talked about how the research evidence hasn’t kept pace with the corporatized world of speculative 48-bed ‘supported living’ establishments and other such ‘developments’. [Odilon Redon, 1916, White vase with flowers] I’ve been hearing quite a lot about these sorts of ‘supported living’ arrangements, what people’s lives are like within them, and what is being done to people to cut costs in the disingenuous names of ‘improving people’s quality of life’ and ‘reducing their dependence’. I’ve also been thinking about how Hillingdon Council have assessed Steven Neary as being subject to a ‘deprivation of liberty’ because he is consistently supported to go about his daily life. Historically, one very powerful prism that has been used to understand what services are doing to people is institutionalisation. This is ...

I’m worrying about the increasing rate at which people contact me to ask if there is any evidence that small, community-based housing is associated with better lives for people with learning disabilities compared to care homes and institutions. My first realisation is that I’m now into the ranks of the academic Stinky Pete old-timers, whose fading memories are dredged for ancient scrolls beyond the reach of a SIRI request (“I did research on this 20 years ago, young grasshopper…”). My bigger worry, however, is that this generational forgetting leaves organisations who should really know this stuff defenceless against waves of attacks on the very idea of independent living (in a disability rights sense) coming from some ‘service providers’ building 48-person ‘supported living units’ (see Mark Neary’s recent blogpost about this https://markneary1dotcom1.wordpress.com/2017/04/27/squeeze-em-in/ ) and local authorities looking for reasons to warehouse people on ground of economies of scale ...