Community Options to Meet Support Needs

by Dora Raymaker

Published March 05, 2009 @ 10:08AM PT

Service and support from the government or other formal institutions is a critical need, and the path to survival for many of us. However, there may be other paths to meet those same needs that work too, perhaps even better in some cases, like community.

The definition of community in the U.S. these post-modern days is strange--highways dice up neighborhoods, information technology redefines the meaning of location, and "leaving the family" at majority never to cohabitate with the rest of the family again even in old age is the social norm. But community does yet exist, and community can be the path to survival for many of us.

The film The Key of G documents one way that community support can look, particularly when the community is defined by shared interests--in this case the arts. This documentary is one I've always longed to see, because support from an arts-based outsider community is largely how I managed to survive my early adulthood. From the film's site:

THE KEY OF G is an award-winning feature documentary about disability, caregiving and interdependence. The film follows Gannet, a charismatic 22-year-old with physical and developmental disabilities, as he leaves his mother's home to share an apartment with a close-knit group of artists and musicians who support him, not only as paid caregivers, but also as friends. Together they create a uniquely successful model of supported living, and a compelling alternative to institutionalized care.

A different sort of intentional community is the international community L'Arche, which has been functioning since the early 1960's. L'Arche's sense of community comes more from shared spirituality. From the page A L'Arche community is...,

...mutual relationships: At the heart of L'Arche communities are relationships between people with and without intellectual disabilities. A respectful relationship between people who treat each other as of equal value provides security, allowing for growth, personal development and freedom to become more fully the people we want to be. Most importantly, mutual relationships foster the acceptance of each person as a unique and valuable individual, whatever his or her abilities or disabilities.

One potential criticizm to community support is that without externally imposed standards of quality or state-mandated watch-dog systems, abuse or poor quality of services might be more likely to occur. But then again, state funded or large institutionally run programs can also be horrific beyond measure, so simply having state watch-dogs doesn't necessarily negate the problem. A community that has true caring for the welfare of its constituents, as well as true inclusion of all constituents in decision making, may be ultimately less prone to those sorts of issues.

"Community" may be evolving into new formats in this 21st century world, but it has not vanished all together. Community by definition includes the notion of interdependence in an ecological sense. Interdependence is how we all survive.