There is an ongoing trend in Western societies, including Australia, to move people with developmental disabilities out of institutions and into community based accommodation. When deinstitutionalisation occurs it impacts not only on the person with a disability but on their significant others and also on the organisation/s providing them with support. While government departments and support organisations say that they involve family members in deinstitutionalisation, little previous research has focussed on family members’ experiences of deinstitutionalisation to know if it is an engaging and empowering experience for them. Most previous studies of deinstitutionalisation, where they have spoken to significant others, have focussed on their perceptions of the benefits or disadvantages of deinstitutionalisation for their son or daughter with a disability directly rather than considering how it impacted upon the significant others. I identified this as a gap in our current knowledge and set out through this study to find out what deinstitutionalisation was like from the viewpoint of some significant others involved in it My research methodology was informed by a Symbolic Interactionist approach whereby I wished to investigate the meaning attached by significant others to the process and the outcomes of deinstitutionalisation through in depth interviews The application of selective coding procedures led to the development of the core category - for some significant others devolution is a disempowering process. This is a different viewpoint to that expressed in the majority of studies of devolution. In considering why this study revealed a different story, I identified through the data and from reviewing the available international literature, that deinstitutionalisation rekindles feelings of guilt regarding the decision to place their child in an out-of-home placement. Application of these principles might result in Empowering Partnerships which would in turn benefit all three players. I translated the three major categories and five principles into a Model of Empowering Partnerships in Devolution. / Master of Arts (Hons)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/189134 |
| Date | January 2005 |
| Creators | Dew, Angela Helen, University of Western Sydney, College of Arts, School of Social Sciences |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
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