Making ‘care’ accessible: Personal assistance for disabled people and the politics of language

Abstract

Disability scholars and activists argue that ‘care’ is a complex form of oppression and reject it as a term and concept. I explore the possibility of salvaging care from its oppressive medical and charitable legacies through a discussion of personal assistance. While not arguing for a return to terming personal assistance ‘care’, I argue care can be made accessible in policies and discussions of attendant services and in more general discussions related to care. Like the built environment, care requires ‘retrofitting’ as in updating existing structures to fully include disability perspectives. This requires redefining care as a complex tension. Accessibility also evokes the sense of ‘at hand’; keeping care at hand in policy discussions allows us to consider transformative feminist conceptualizations of care and captures intricate relationships between attendants and disabled people, including people with intellectual disabilities. Most importantly, accessible versions of care always acknowledge the oppressive legacies and coercive potentials of care.