Locating the problem -- Intellectual disability: a brief history -- Governing disability in the community -- The work of everyday life -- How the group home works -- All in a day's work -- Endless, uncertain work -- The clinical problem of everyday life -- Group home technologies -- Expertise and the work of staff meetings -- Paper technologies: doing and documenting -- Goal plans and individual conduct -- At risk -- What everybody knows about Paul -- Conclusion: making life work
Summary
Group homes emerged in the United States in the 1970s as a solution to the failure of the large institutions that, for more than a century, segregated and abused people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Yet community services have not, for the most part, delivered on the promises of rights, self-determination, and integration made more than thirty years ago, and critics predominantly portray group homes simply as settings of social control. Making Life Work/ is a clear-eyed ethnography of a New York City group home based on more than a year of field research. Jack Levinson show
