Table of Contents

PART I: INTRODUCTION. Qualitative evaluation and research: Toward community support for everyone. PART II: COMMUNITY INTEGRATION: POLICIES TO SUPPORT COMMUNITY AND SYSTEMS CHANGE. "New decades, new decisions": Community integration and deinstitutionalization. "Who is going to choose who will stay?" Garrity vs. Gallen: The role of the court in institutional closure. The Closing of Laconia: From the inside out. Speaking for oneself: A qualitative study of self advocacy and guardianship. "People working together": Local control, health care financing, federal regulations and state policy. "People want the same things we all do:" The story of the area agency in Dover, New Hampshire. PART III: MOVING TOWARD UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO SUPPORT: POLICY IS PERSONAL. Psychiatric survivors and the international self help movement: "User-controlled" personal assistance services in the US. Self advocacy, independent living, and personal assistance services: Perspectives of "consumer experts." Children, youth and adults with brain injuries. Youth and community life: Adult perspectives' on personal assistance services for youth with disabilities. PART IV: HOUSING, FAMILIES AND COMMUNITY SUPPORT: POLICY EVALUATION, RESEARCH AND ANALYSIS. The role of family case study research in family policy: Local agency delivery systems. State policy in housing and support: Evaluation and policy analysis of state systems. The role of ethnographies with people, in communities and systems. State and regional policy analysis: Foster care and out-of-home placements with children and adolescents. Organizational case studies: Creating change in hous-ing, families and community support. Toward better futures an quality of lives. Appendix A: Annotated bibliography. Appendix B: Methodological descriptions

About the Author

Julie Ann Racino, MAPA, is Principal and President of Community and Policy Studies in Rome, New York. She has served as Associate and Deputy Director of the National Research and Training Center and its related national, state, and local projects at the Center on Human Policy at Syracuse University. Ms. Racino was selected for Who's Who of Women in the World and has over twenty years of experience in the policy, management, research, and development of community services. She is lead editor and primary author of the book Housing, Support and Community, and she has written over 100 articles in the areas of social policy and disability, organizational studies, and community services. Ms. Racino is a graduate of Cornell University and the Maxwell School of International and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. She has taught at the undergraduate and graduate levels at the Syracuse University School of Education and in the psychology department at The State University of New York at Oswego, and has lectured throughout the United States and the United Kingdom on public policy, community integration, and disability.