‘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

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).