Eroding the collective ‘places’ of support: emerging geographies of personalisation for people with intellectual disabilities

Abstract

Disability policy has evolved over the last ten years to a greater focus on individually-tailored supports and interventions to enable people with intellectual disabilities (referred to as learning disabilities in the UK) achieve active participation and engagement in the community. In response to the shifting policy emphasis, support environments are increasingly becoming more decentralised to enable people to live more independently, which is having implications on the way services have been designed. At the same time, there has been an accelerating erosion of state- and provider-led supports and entitlements and an increasing push towards local actors and institutions in the delivery of support. New roles and a myriad of new individualised support arrangements have emerged in response to the shifting emphasis in support delivery (Dowling et al., 2006). As a result, the ‘local’ is an increasingly important axis whereby support services are becoming configured. A geographical focus can help to unpack where persons with intellectual disabilities are being supported, with a focus on their everyday environment and the extent to which they are connected. Such a focus can help uncover new spatial arrangements of support. This chapter examines these new trends, focusing on the changing landscape of support. It provides a critical socio-geographical appraisal of the emerging processes and effects of the recent disability policy context, providing insights into the complex everyday negotiations and challenges of facilitating individually-tailored support arrangements

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ORCID for Andrew Power: orcid.org/0000-0002-3887-1050

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