The care system

For most of my working life, since I was 18 years old, I’ve worked as a support worker for people with
severe intellectual disabilities. My work in this job has often prompted me to reflect on a number of
things.

For instance, who are these people I am supporting, and what brings them to the facilities I work in?
Who are their families, and how do those families feel about people like me and the fact that their
family member is living in state-run housing?
What is my role in all this, and what is the value of my work to wider society?
Why do the public seem willing to pay for all of this?
Yet why does it all seem so hidden away and unseen?
And not just from popular culture or from the public sphere, but also hidden away at the margins of
sociology. I’ve never once seen severe intellectual disability discussed in a social science course I’ve
taken or taught.

If I was going to try and summarize these concerns in one rather abstract academic question, it might be
this:
How can we locate the micro-level interactions, practices and relationships which compose of support
work, alongside an understanding of organizational and political which enable and shape those
practices, alongside a broader socio-structural, cultural and historical understanding of how we got
here?

To put it another way: Is there a sociological approach which can work simultaneously at three levels?
The level of interaction: of speaking, of seeing, of touching, or of performing tasks.
The level of organization: what is this space? How do we divide up the time? Who lives there? Who
works there? What are the policies and procedures?