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8 - ‘Control over the Remote Control’, or How to Handle the ‘Normal’ World? The Policy and Practice of Community Care for People with Psychiatric or Intellectual Disabilities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 January 2021

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Summary

Introduction

The past 25 years have witnessed a policy of deinstitutionalization for psychiatric patients and people with intellectual disabilities, both in the Netherlands and abroad. No longer banished to institutions in the countryside, the policy posits that it would be better for these people to once again be a part of society, to live in ordinary neighborhoods in towns and villages. While there would be additional support for these individuals, the idea was that they would live in their own houses (instead of institutions) as independently and autonomously as possible. Since the late 1990s, this policy has broadly been referred to as community care (Means & Smith 1998).

This chapter draws on the research project ‘Living in the Community? Community Care for Psychiatric Patients and People with Intellectual disabilities’ This project examines the effects of the policy of community care in urban renewal areas where many psychiatric patients and people with intellectual disabilities end up living (social housing, which these groups often depend on, is available in these neighborhoods). The focus lies in how psychiatric patients and people with intellectual disabilities living independently in these neighborhoods experience their new ‘homes’. Next to archival and literature research, we conducted extended interviews with around 100 people with different psychiatric or intellectual disabilities. The research took place in neighborhoods in three cities: Zwolle, Hilversum and Amsterdam – a mixture of smaller and larger towns in more metropolitan and rural surroundings.

After reviewing the criticisms of institutionalization, this chapter examines whether, and to what extent, the policy of deinstitutionalization has led to a sense of belonging in the neighborhood among psychiatric patients and people with intellectual disabilities. Why do we focus on ‘belonging’? What does ‘belonging’ have to do with the quality of life of people with psychiatric problems or intellectual disabilities in poor, deteriorated neighborhoods? Quite a lot, as it turns out. In the Netherlands in the 1970s, the main criticism of housing these individuals in institutions focused on their alienation and exclusion from society. As a result, living outside institutions became the dominant aim.

Type
Chapter
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City in Sight
Dutch Dealings with Urban Change
, pp. 159 - 172
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2009

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