The Community Support Worker of the 1980s, as She was Imagined: A Genealogy

• Main Author: Cambiazo, Pamela
• Other Authors: Jeffery, Donna Irene
• Language: English; en
• Published: 2014
• Subjects: Community living; community support worker; Woodlands; intellectual disability
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1828/5598

I am a community support worker who supports people with intellectual disabilities to live full lives with dignity in the community. This is a role that can trace its heritage to the 1980s when large institutions in BC closed in favour of community group homes. Current scholarship suggests that the requisite full lives promised at the time the institutions closed have not materialized in the years since. Further, this scholarship suggests that it is the community support worker who has failed to deliver on important social goals. As a worker I can attest that I do at times feel unsettled in my work, like my mere presence is problematic, as if I fail by showing up. Based on the premise that I can learn about the worker of present by looking at how she was first imagined, in this genealogical study I explore how the community support worker of the 1980s was produced in archival documents of groups involved in the development of community group homes after the closure of Woodlands in New Westminster, BC. My findings suggest that the community support worker role served many interests, and that her purpose was not solely trained to the social needs of the people she supported. A confluence of economic rationalities, family concerns, and regulatory demands shaped her as an invisible domestic idealized as a temporary solution to a problem that was expected to dissipate through the increased independence of people with disabilities, and the participation of a welcoming community that steps up to help when needed. The ongoing presence of the worker calls into question her original mandate. === Graduate === 0630 === 0452 === [e-mail]