Support Work Relationships: Budget Holders with Intellectual Disabilities and their Support Workers

Deborah Luise Lutz explores support work relationships, the relationships between people with intellectual disabilities in receipt of a personal budget and their support workers. Through the methodology of Institutional Ethnography, she specifically investigates how personal budget policies that organize support work in Germany and Australia influence support work relationships. She found that the policies of personal budgets are connected to people’s views and expectations about the support work relationship and the support work context that influence the relationship. The author argues that disability research, policy and practice need to be cognisant of this interconnection to improve the quality of support work relationships.