Self-directed Disability Support at the Local Level –
Whose Power, Whose Control?
Exploring Models for Municipal Service Provision
Rosalyn Mary Roberts (MSW, DSW)
ABSTRACT
Australia is undertaking a major, six-year reform of the nation-wide system of support and care services for people with disabilities. This research explores the implications of systemic changes at a microsystemic level – the provision of in-home disability support services by a Victorian municipality through the Home and Community Care program.
As the reform involves a change from the current organisational-controlled arrangements to a Self-directed Care model, this practice-based research focusses on investigating how the new approach may enhance the empowerment of the service recipients in this municipal setting. The study explores the perceptions of service users and service providers of aspects of power and control important to them. It aimed to generate findings from these insights that the council can apply to its service planning.
The study uses a participatory action methodology, extended by the principles of the Critical Disability Studies approach, to carry out collaborative research with three community groups representing cultural diversity in the municipality. Data from twenty semi-structured interviews and three focus groups were analysed initially by clustering responses for the two participant groups (service users and service providers) separately into a number of experiential ‘realms’. The second stage of analysis applied an abductive reasoning process to the data as a whole, resulting in the synthesis of the realms into six ‘themes’ representing the participants’ insights into the key factors that needed to be considered in designing empowering services. The six themes were: the personal in everyday life; environmental barriers: negotiating the external world; the relational sphere; institutional barriers to empowering services; the realm of cultural difference; and, the macrosystemic sphere: personal, relational and institutional interfaces.
The findings contribute to Critical Social Work research and practice in the field of disability services through the identification of the action strategies of a comprehensive planning framework. These include: maximising service user ‘agency’, resisting neo-liberal control; pursuing cultural competence; promoting human rights practice, and enabling interdependent relationships. Together the strategies provide insights into how a range of theoretical perspectives of disability empowerment intersect with the application of a Self-directed Care model. In generating a holistic and integrated framework the study’s findings have relevance both as a potential model for service user empowerment at the local level and beyond, and as a guide for life planning for people with disabilities in the new Australian disability support and care system.
Thesis
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