‘It’s like having another job’: the invisible work of self-managing attendant services

Abstract

This reflexive ethnographic study examines the work disabled people do to ‘self-manage’ attendant services. The data reveal diverse facets of work reported by ‘self-managers’, their support networks and program administrators. The analysis found that self-managers’ work is often represented as ‘something other than work’, if and when it is represented at all. In this paper, disability studies and feminist perspectives on work inform a discussion of factors that may be seen to render self-managers’ work ‘invisible’, and implications of self-managed models that require contributions of invisible work.

Keywords:

• attendant services
• direct funding
• direct payments
• invisible work
• self-management
• independent living

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank the research participants for their invaluable insights; Pamela Cushing, Shanon Phelan and Jessica Polzer for their support and contributions to this research; and the anonymous reviewers for their most helpful feedback.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under Grant 752-2015-1938.