ABSTRACT

This chapter examines some of the conditions needed for clients to become controllers, for staff to become servants and for managers to become redundant. The ultimate goal of services based on ordinary life principles is for the clients to outgrow their need for help, to become ordinary members of society. That's a paradox which few people in our society are prepared to believe, still less work to make happen. The quality of any social service is determined largely by the people working in it. Their qualifications, experience and personality all contribute to producing a 'good' staff team – an elusive mixture that cannot be created to order. People with physical and sensorial disabilities have rightly promoted self-advocacy within services. Transforming the relationships between the helper and the helped, the teacher and the taught, is the solution to the paradox of enabling special people to lead ordinary lives.