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What you call a place where a learning disabled person lives is so telling. "Care facility" has popped up today. In Steven's care plan, the writer cannot bring himself to mention the words everyone else would use (Steven's home, or his flat etc). 1/
The first sentence in the "Accomodation" section says "Steven's current placement is a ground floor council maisonette". It says so much. "Current" implies temporary. He's only there at the whim of a decision maker. And it won't last. 2/
"Placement" drives me potty. He's been placed there as if he just dropped from the sky like Mr Bean. It's about power and othering, not about someone's life. I can't think of anywhere else or any other group of people who would call their home a placement. 3/
I used to like winding up Whistler's Mother about this. She let slip one day where she lived, so every now & then I would ask how things were in her Ruislip placement. She smiled through gritted teeth, but never changed her vocabulary with Steven. 4/
It's this sort of mindset that can call someone's much loved home a placement or a facility that inevitably plays into the not quite human culture & leads to all the awful discrimination that has been so prelevant during the pandemic. 5/
