Choice for Intentional Community & Shared Living
15 September 2015
Houses of Parliament, Palace of Westminster
A parliamentary presentation on the benefits and methods of Shared Living and Intentional Community for the support of learning disabled adults.
Shared living and intentional community are demonstrably components of the most successful models of support for learning disabled adults, and deliver tremendous value. Many of these models are under threat unnecessarily to the detriment of both the learning disabled and the wider community.
The models employed by organisations such as Shared Lives Plus, L ’Arche and Camphill all successfully deliver these components of community and shared living through a variety of different routes and methodologies.
The presentations highlighted different aspects of intentional community and shared living including benefits (for instance, physical, emotional and psychological well being, cost efficiency) and an explanation of the different approaches used by different organisations.
The session also included a literature round-up, medical overview and personal accounts and perspectives from learning disabled adults and their families. Speakers and personnel from a wide range of organisations were on hand to answer questions.
Speakers
Chair: Dr Simon Duffy, Director of the Centre for Welfare Reform: Read his report / View video
Steve Briault, Chair of the Alliance for Camphill, Trustee of Emerson College and of The Mount: Download his paper / View video
Dr Marcus van Dam, GP for Botton Village Community, Danby Surgery: Download his paper / View video
Dr Stuart Cumella, Honorary Senior Lecturer, School of Social Policy, University of Birmingham: Download his paper / View PowerPoint presentation / View video
Sally Murray-Jones, Parent of a learning disabled adult: Download her paper / View video
James Skinner, Lucy Riis-Johannessen and Frank Walters, Botton Village community members: View video
Anthony Kramers, Regional Leader, L’Arche Scotland, and Richard Keagan-Bull, Chair of L’Arche National Speaking Group: View video
Richard Davis, Vanguard: Download his paper
Anita Bennett, Chair of Rescare: View video
Handout, 20 page synopsis of presentations and additional information e.g. from Shared Lives Plus: Download paper
Financial examples, 2 page summary of cost savings through the life-sharing approach: Download paper
Research papers are available following this link to the Camphill Research Network
Forword by John O’Brien, Centre for Welfare Reform
“Assisting people to live with dignity and meaning is the ultimate purpose of social care. To serve this purpose, the experiences of Camphill, Shared Lives Plus and L’Arche can make important contributions to a critical question for policy and practice: how to assist and safeguard people without inhibiting them from living a real and meaningful life. Making the best of these communities, after communities evolving responses to this question requires humility enough among policy makers and commissioners to recognize the limits of the whole social care field’s current answers.
I have not chosen life as a member of any of these small but deeply important social movements for myself, and I know many people with learning disabilities and families who would not make the choice either, but I am deeply grateful to those who have. They intentionally strive to live together in a way that embodies values that deserve to thrive in an open society.
Camphill and L’Arche are each founded on a different, distinctive understanding of human development, a thoughtfully developed sense of the significant contribution that people with learning disabilities can make to society, and the central importance of mutual relationships founded on respect for the dignity of the person as the foundation for realizing that contribution. Not everyone will agree with these ways of understanding, often because they draw explicitly from spiritual traditions and encourage spiritual development, but I know of no legitimate reason for rejecting them.
Both traditions are founded on shared-life households and both place great value on hospitality. Their boundaries may be distinct, but they are open and each has proud traditions of welcome for strangers and engagement with neighbours. Those who offer assistance and those who receive it strive for a relationship more personal than that of a staff member and client. The importance of mutuality influences the economics of the household: offering assistance is not understood as a typical job for pay.
Each tradition faces the question of adapting with integrity to a changing environment. Increasing awareness of the importance of people’s own voice and choices raises productive questions, as does the challenge of keeping communities’ animating spirit alive as the interests of potential life-sharers change. Like any human endeavour, it is possible for people to fail to live what they value, so safeguarding each household’s expression of the tradition is a real and relevant question that each movement must take seriously.
Living the particular gifts of L’Arche and Camphill brings the sort of healthy diversity that enriches the possibilities for assisting people to live meaningful lives. The social care field as a whole would be impoverished without the choice of life-sharing in these two deeply rooted intentional communities."