The survey on personal assistance(PA), conducted by ENIL in the period 19 January – 4 March 2018, contained 138 characteristics of PA, arranged into 5 categories: Context, Funding, Needs assessment, Provision, and Working conditions. Participants were asked to assess each characteristic on a scale from -3 (maximal hindrance of choice and control) to +3 (maximal enabler of choice and control). At the end of the list of characteristics in each category, participants were given the opportunity to add comments in an open-ended way.
In this article, I provide an overview of these qualitative responses. Of the 54 people who responded to the survey, 16 provided such open-ended comments including information, recommendations and critique. I present these responses (with personal and country names omitted to preserve confidentiality) by organising them into three broad rubrics: 1) information about personal assistance in respondents’ localities; 2) recommendations about personal assistance in principle; and 3) comments on the survey. Where appropriate, I also discuss correlations with the quantitative results of the survey, which I already presented in a previous article published in ENIL’s Newsletter in March 2018.
At the next stage, the results of the survey will be used to construct a checklist for evaluation of PA schemes. Each item in this checklist will be assign a ‘weight’ based on the score it has achieved in the survey. The checklist will then be used to create quantitative profiles of PA schemes across Europe, which will make them comparable. Eventually, such evaluations and comparisons could be used for advocacy purposes.
Read the full article here.
