We need to move further away from traditional institutionalization, not back towards it.

I’ve probably said this before.  But it’s so important I feel like it needs a standalone post.  

If only having my own house keys were enough to guarantee my services are not institutional.

I talk a lot about the dystopian hell that exists beneath the shiny surface of the developmental disability home and community-based service (HCBS) waiver system.  Because I live in this hell.  Because people living in this hell don’t get heard from enough, especially online.  Because if something terrible is happening to me, it’s happening to the other people in this system as well.  All kinds of good reasons.

But people misuse the horror stories coming out of the HCBS system.  They use them to say that we need to bring back the old system.  Traditional institutionalization.  Or new shiny variants on it like those farm-based “intentional communities” — a weird word considering people don’t get a choice as to whether to live there.  Those are still institutions, by the way.  So are large parts of the HCBS system.  Institutions are determined by who has what kind of power and control, not by the shape of the building or the number of people living there.

Anyway.

To be very, very clear.

The horror stories coming out of the HCBS system all come from the things HCBS has in common with traditional institutions.

So the problem is not that we have moved too far away from traditional institutions, and need to move backwards to make things better.  The problem is that we have not moved far enough away from the practices of traditional institutions.  The solution is to be less like a traditional institution, not to bring back traditional institutions.

Oh and about that “bringing back the institutions” thing.  I know a lot of the larger institutions closed.  But not all of them did.  It’s not like we just have a world empty of traditional institutions, so “bringing back the institutions” is a concept that doesn’t quite make sense.  We’re still fighting to close them.

But we have to replace them with something better, or people just get moved from one kind of hell to another.

And we’re supposed to be so grateful for this that we don’t complain about the things that have stayed just the same as traditional institutions.  Which is a whole lot of important things.

So again.

The problem is not that we have left traditional institutions behind and need to go back to them.  The problem is that we have not gone far enough away from them and we need to become even less like them.

Anyone using HCBS horror stories to promote traditional institutions is coming at the problem bass-ackwards.  HCBS horror stories should cause people to want to close all the traditional institutions and make services resemble old-style institutions as little as possible.  On a deep level involving power and control, not on a cosmetic level where all you’ve done is slap some new decorations on the walls of the old system.