This thesis explored the lives of carers of disabled people, and the research process itself within the collaborative framework of a support group. It used as its data sources an extensive review of the literature, interview transcripts and fieldnotes from carers, participants from the local service system, and the records of meetings and activities of the Group over 5 years. The study highlights the way public discourse on deinstitutionalisation has so captured our consciousness on care of disabled people that the personal reality of care in the family home has been effectively lost. It traces the disordering discourses of disablement and their link with constructions of caring. The personal reality of care and the isolating nature of this union of caring and disablement was the primary research focus. This may be characterised by social loss, and a lifestyle bound up with disablement which involves a search for a supportive or caring culture. The isolation and exclusion of carers occurs behind the screens of apparently caring institutions such as marriage, family, community and the service system. In the search for a caring cuture carers find their lives bound up with that of state and service systems which offer some hope of a supportive response. Instead they invariably find that the culture is an alien one. The research informed attempts of the Group to explore improved forms of caring culture, and more relevant public policy approaches. The study attempted to bridge the gap between the process of knowledge construction and discourse, and the material experience of carers / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)