Supported Living - International Collaborations in Supportive Living

International Collaborations in Supportive Living

As Linda Ward (1995) wrote in her edited text on "Values and Visions: Changing Ideas in Services for People with Learning Difficulties." "the flaws of the "group home model" were recognised sooner in the USA than the UK." (p.12). Termed, "supportive living", she says these developments have been richly documented by Racino, Walker, O'Connor, & Taylor (1993). Written at the time of the 9-state pilots by the federal government on Community Supported Living Arrangements in the US, she noted great interstate variability in what it was and did identify the primary principles near the 1991 national organizational study (separation of housing and support, one individual at at time, full user choice and control, rejecting no one, and a focus on relationships, with maximum use of informal support and community resources). For comparisons, about the same time, Paul Williams (1995) identified the residential services available in Great Britain, including life sharing, hostels, staffed houses, living alone, lodgings, family placements, group homes, living with families, short term care, hospitals and village communities, among others.

One of the most important initiatives of the 1980s and 1990s on homes and community living in the United Kingdom was the "influential paper "An Ordinary Life"" which was shared in the US through our internationally known colleague David Towell then of the King's Fund and Great Britain's National Development Team. One of his influential books, "An Ordinary Life in Practice" was paired with his strategic framework for principled national change. Within the comprehensive book (1988), Richard Brazil and Nan Carle describe an ordinary home life, Linda Ward describes developing opportunities for an ordinary community life, Paul Williams and Alan Tyne values for service development(normalization-based, Wolf Wolfensberger), Alice Etherington, Keven Hall & Emma Whelan as service users (where I live, where I work), Philippa Russell on children and families, Jan Porterfield on regular employment, Jim Mansell on training, David Towell on managing strategic change, and Roger Blunden on safeguarding quality, among others.