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Personal assistance: direct payments or alternative public service: does it matter for the promotion of user control?
- Author:
- ASKHEIM Ole Petter
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 20(3), May 2005, pp.247-260.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
Personal assistance organised as direct payments is seen as an important means for securing user control and freeing disabled people from their reliance on welfare professionals and unpaid carers. The hypothesis put forward in the article is that just looking at whether personal assistance is organised as direct payments or as an alternative service represents an overly restricted approach to judge how the user’s preferences are taken care of. By comparing models of personal assistance in the US, the UK, Sweden and Norway it will show that several other factors influence user control. In the final part of the article the question is raised as to whether paternalism is always negative for welfare service users. Since the users constitute a broad group it might be questioned if the assumption of the service users as rational, well informed and competent to make the best choices is always valid.
Personal assistance for people with intellectual impairments: experiences and dilemmas
- Author:
- ASKHEIM Ole Petter
- Journal article citation:
- Disability and Society, 18(3), May 2003, pp.325-339.
- Publisher:
- Taylor and Francis
The article gives an account of how personal assistance is adapted to people with intellectual impairments in Norway and the experiences with the arrangement for this target group. Discusses the challenges and dilemmas of including people with intellectual impairments in the target group for personal assistance, since people other than the user as a rule fill the role as manager of the service. Special attention is paid to the parents' role since they often act as managers on behalf of their sons/daughters. Furthermore, the assistants' role is discussed and the importance of how they meet the users. Finally, there is a discussion of the consequences the extension of personal assistance to intellectually impaired users might have both for personal assistance as a service and for the ordinary care services.