Reshaping the Way Parents and Services Relate

Neoliberal individualism emphasises that adults with intellectual disabilities are adults first, which sidelines parents even when they provide 24-hour care and support. The chapter opens by examining narratives from research and practice that reveal different perspectives between services and parents of adults, and suggest strategies to negotiate them. It examines a dilemma for services, that they exist to help parents but also to check whether they might be abusive or damaging. One way to address this constructively is to find topics that relate to both dimensions. Poverty is proposed as one phenomenon that illuminates both aspects. While recognising that abuse does not only occur in impoverished families, and that most poor families are not abusive, future research into intellectual disability should nevertheless make it possible to understand and address poverty. Projects should be funded to recruit representative samples, and editors encouraged to value if not require them. Tools to improve the relationship between parents and services are reviewed. The potential significance of communities of solidarity are explored, as recent research suggests that these are more important than inserting the ‘voice’ of intellectual disability into government and policy.