HDCA’s Health and Disability Thematic Group 2020/21 Series
Presenter: Toon Benoot, Ghent University
Systems of personal budgets for people with disabilities aim to contribute to the choice and control people have over their own care and support trajectory. The redistribution of welfare resources to service users is intended to contribute to quality care, individual autonomy and personal wellbeing. In this presentation, Toon will outline the key findings of his PhD, discussing how these policies, explicitly modelled as capability promoting policies, influence the practice of care and support for people with intellectual disabilities. Central topics are the notion of ‘a capable human being’ and the capability to aspire. He draws on a variety of data that reflects the voices of different parties involved in the support process: from people with intellectual disabilities, executives of care organisations and social workers who administer budgets.
Toon Benoot is affiliated to the Department of Social Work and Social Pedagogics at the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences of Ghent University. Toon works on pedagogics in a context of personalised care for people with disabilities. His fields of interests are: welfare reform, theories of social justice and the conceptualisation of autonomy and in(ter)dependency.