Personal Assistance

Persons with extensive disabilities need assistance by other people in their everyday lives with such activities as getting bathed and dressed or going to the toilet; with shopping, preparing meals, cleaning or doing the laundry; with such responsibilities within the family as doing the practical tasks involved in raising small children or assisting one' s aging parents. Assistants help the user at work, about town and on travel. They assist in communicating or in structuring the day, as the case might be. In brief, assistants help with those activities which the user would have done by himself or herself, had it not been for a physical, sensory, mental or intellectual disability.

Introduction

Social policy is typically not made by the people who are most affected by it. Up to now, we, the users of assistance, have had to accept the decisions handed down to us by other people. Since we are often considered helpless and incapable of taking charge of our own lives, the public and often we ourselves have taken for granted that it is best for us, if others, the professionals make these decisions for us.