
Dissertation Defence: Younger Disabled Adults in Long-Term Care – A Foucauldian Genealogy
March 19 at 9:30 am - 1:30 pm

Michelle Hewitt, supervised by Dr. Rachelle Hole, will defend their dissertation titled “Younger Disabled Adults in Long-Term Care – A Foucauldian Genealogy” in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies – Community Engagement, Social Change, and Equity.
An abstract for Michelle Hewitt’s dissertation is included below.
Examinations are open to all members of the campus community as well as the general public. Please email rachelle.hole@ubc.ca to receive the Zoom link for this exam.
ABSTRACT
The presumption is that long-term care institutions are seniors’ homes, but 7% of the population is between the ages of 19 and 64 (Statistics Canada, 2016). These younger disabled adults report great dissatisfaction with their lives, anecdotally and through the available literature. This research uses a Foucauldian genealogical approach to look at why this is so, and how it has happened, and views all of this work through a Critical Disability Lens.
Foucault (1974) considered his works to be “a kind of toolbox” (p. 523), and as such, there is no single method for a genealogy. I begin this research by establishing the Present, the lived experience today, by extended interviews with three younger disabled adults currently living in long-term care, and a media analysis that captures the thoughts of a further 19 people. This Present is then problematized. First, I present a brief examination of the long history of institutionalization, from the Elizabethan Poor Laws up to the establishment of British Columbia’s long-term care program in 1978. Then, I investigate the long-term care program through a document analysis, positioning the available governmental documents against the concurrent opinions of civil society.
The outcome of this research is a narrative genealogy that pieces together this story. I demonstrate that attitudes towards disabled people have been hard-wired into our society, and shows that these younger disabled adults are forgotten and invisible, with policies and practices failing to take their unique needs into consideration.