Who cares for these children? An historical analysis of recent documents on provision for those with developmental disabilities

While family care has many positive attributes, total care by mothers may not always be the optimal care arrangement from the point of view of the children or their mothers. Here we examine the way deinstitutionalisation policies for children with developmental disabilities has swung away from often inadequately funded institutions, substituting ‘community care’. ‘Community care’ is largely tending work carried out by mothers. The public sector again is under funded and provides almost no tending for these children. We examine the way the rhetoric of community care has hidden the labour of tending work carried out by mothers, and examine the discourses used to justify moving this labour from the public to the private sphere.