Journal of Intellectual Disability Research

716

doi: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2009.01181.x

volume 53 part 8 pp 716726 august 2009

People with an intellectual disability living in an

intentional community
jir_1181

716..726

M. Randell & S. Cumella

School of Clinical and Experimental Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, England

Abstract
Background Hospital closure programmes in
England have generally sought to attain a fulfilling
life for people with an intellectual disability by
locating them in domestic-style housing in urban
settings. Few have been placed in intentional or
village communities. Yet comparative studies of
different housing types have found that intentional
communities have better or similar outcomes for
their residents than dispersed housing or residential
clusters on former hospital sites. A possible explanation is the distinctive pattern of social relationships that exist in many intentional communities
and the impact this has on the lives of their residents. This paper reports the results of research that
explores the perceptions of people with an ID living
in an intentional community and the meaning of
their community to them.
Methods The research used an ethnographic
approach to interview a sample of 15 residents in a
large intentional community (Botton Village), which
is part of the Camphill Movement. Interviews used
Makaton, pictures and symbols where required.
Results Respondents included 10 men and 5
women aged between 38 and 78 years. Length of
residence in Botton Village ranged from 5 to 50
years. All lived with the families of co-workers and

valued these relationships. All but one (who had

retired) worked in a diverse range of employment in
the village. Almost all were positive about their
work. Respondents reported that they took part in
both individual and communal leisure activities and
all but two had a network of friends. Opportunities
for friendship were enhanced by proximity to other
people with an ID and a sense of personal security
in the village. As in many villages and communities
in society in general, these advantages were balanced by some loss of privacy.
Conclusions Results confirm those from earlier
studies of intentional communities and suggest that
positive outcomes derive from the absence of the
overt subordination of residents to staff, the facilitation of friendship with other people with an ID,
high levels of meaningful employment and a sense
of community. These factors contrast with the experience of living in small homes funded on a contractual basis by public authorities, in which cost
pressures reduce wage levels for staff resulting in
difficulties in retaining suitable staff and a consequent high staff turnover.
Keywords village communities, intentional
communities, ethnography, Camphill Movement,
intellectual disability

Introduction
Correspondence: Dr Stuart Cumella, School of Clinical and
Experimental Medicine, University of Birmingham, Birmingham,
B15 2TT, England (e-mail: s.cumella@bham.ac.uk).

Public policy for people with ID in England has

been dominated since the 1980s by the gradual

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closure of the large residential hospitals and the

development of alternative services. The pattern of
publicly funded residential care that replaced the
hospitals across much of the country includes
domiciliary support to individual residents living in
their own homes, small staffed homes in conversions of ordinary housing on the lines proposed in
An Ordinary Life (Kings Fund 1980) and residential campuses of specialist healthcare units for
people with additional health needs, usually located
on former hospital sites (Stevens 2004). Although
these three categories of accommodation differ in
management, funding and staffing, they share two
common characteristics: the continuing subordination of residents to professionals and care staff, and
an attempt to attain a fulfilling life for residents by
locating them in housing that resembles that lived
in by the rest of the population. In an urban society
like England, this means living in flats, detached
and semi-detached housing in cities and towns.
Few former hospital residents have been
resettled into intentional or village communities
(Emerson et al. 1999), which have mainly been
developed by independent charities for people with
ID moving from their family homes. Intentional
communities usually comprise clusters of small
houses, some in rural settings. The most recent
available estimate (Department of Health 2001) is
that there are 73 such communities in England,
with a total of about 3000 residents. Intentional
communities have diverse patterns of staffing and
organisation, with a number (21 in the UK)
managed by two movements: the Camphill Movement and LArche. These promote a more egalitarian pattern of internal organisation than other
forms of supported housing. In place of salaried
care staff, co-workers (Camphill) and assistants
(LArche) are motivated by a personal calling to
live alongside people with ID, share their homes
and pool their income.
Intentional communities have been criticised as a
return to the segregation of people with ID and a
denial of the principles of normalisation (e.g.
Jackson 1999). However, the largest UK study of
the quality of life and costs of different forms of
supported housing (Emerson et al. 1999) found that
on several indicators intentional communities provided less institutional regimes and a higher quality
of life than other types of supported accommoda-

tion. Compared with residential campuses and

dispersed housing (i.e. small staffed homes and
residents supported to live in their own homes),
intentional communities were most likely to involve
people with ID in activity planning, were more
likely to provide skill training, were safer, engaged
residents in more hours of scheduled activities, had
a higher rate of health checks and contacts with
health and social care professionals, and provided
more training for their staff. Mean costs/resident
were also lower than alternative forms of supported
housing. Intentional communities were similar to
dispersed housing schemes with respect to the
degree of personal choice available to their residents, the social networks of their residents and the
degree of physical activity engaged in by residents.
For each of these indicators, intentional communities and dispersed housing schemes had better outcomes than residential campuses. Compared with
dispersed housing schemes, intentional communities
tend to have less homely accommodation, which in
some communities is more likely to be used for
short-term care. The proportion of staff with professional qualifications was lower than in other forms
of housing.
This contrast between intentional communities
and residential campuses is striking because both
types of accommodation characteristically have
similar physical layouts, with clusters of small
houses on a shared site. This makes it important
to investigate other factors that may explain the
comparative success of intentional communities, in
particular the pattern of social relationships
between residents with an ID and their assistants/
co-workers. To date, there has been little research
into the lives of the residents of intentional communities. This paper reports results from research
that aimed to explore the experiences of people
living in an intentional community, and to understand what the idea of community means to
them as individuals.

Method
The research used an ethnographic approach, in
which the researcher seeks to understand social
behaviour by uncovering the meanings that
underpin social actions (Giddens 2001). This is

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particularly appropriate for studying people living

together in a community (Angrosino 1997). Fieldwork involved a combination of unstructured interviews with residents with ID and participant
observation by the researcher (ML). This paper
reports the results of the interviews. Because the
research was aiming to develop an understanding of
peoples experiences, it was not hypothesis-driven,
and instead used a grounded theory approach in
which theory is generated from a systematic analysis
of data (Glaser & Strauss 1967; Strauss & Corbin
1998; Beart et al. 2004).
The intentional community chosen for study was
Botton Village, which is part of the Camphill Movement. This is a registered charity that manages 90
intentional communities in 21 countries in Europe,
North America, Africa and India. Eleven of these
are in the UK and provide permanent homes for
1100 people of whom about half have an ID
(Camphill Village Trust 2002). Botton Village was
the first (1955) and is still the largest community
managed by the trust. It is located in a several clusters of farm and domestic buildings in a dale in the
North York Moors National Park.
At the time of the fieldwork (October to December 2005), Botton Village had 132 adult members
with ID. Sampling followed the principles set out by
Glaser & Strauss (1967), and used an initial selective sample designed to identify respondents who
had lived in the village for different durations. The
population was grouped into five cohorts according
to numbers of decades of residence (i.e. from 010
years to 4150 years). The sample was selected at
random with equal numbers from each cohort, and
sampling continued until additional respondents
reported similar beliefs and experiences to those
already sampled. Interviews used Makaton and a
range of pictures and symbols to aid communication where required, but some residents were nevertheless unable to participate because of insufficient
communication and cognitive skills. In addition,
four members were excluded because of anxiety
about changes to their routine or the introduction
of new people. The final sample included 15 respondents, with three from each cohort.
Interviews used only simple open-ended questions to minimise the risk of acquiescence, considered by some researchers to be a common form of
response bias among people with ID (e.g. Sigelman

et al. 1981; Heal & Chadley-Rusch 1985; Harner

1991; Heal & Rubin 1993). It was necessary to vary
question-wording in some cases to take account of
the communicative style of the respondent. Interviews were piloted with two randomly selected
members, resulting in several changes in question
format. Data from pilot interviews were not
included in the analysis. Interviews comprised open
questions relating to respondents home life, work,
hobbies, friends, religious beliefs and views about
living as part of the Botton Village. Respondents
were asked directly about aspects of their lives at
Botton they did not like. Each respondent was
given the option of stopping the interview and continuing at a later time. However, all but four interviews were completed in a single session. The
interviews took 90 min to complete, and were
audio-recorded to avoid distractions from the use of
paper and pens. Interviews were conducted in a
range of environments from peoples home, work
setting or in communal environments like the coffee
bar. All interviews were completed at times when
it was quiet to maintain confidentiality and
ensure that answers were not affected by people
worrying that they may be overheard. The time and
place that the interviews took place were solely left
to the respondent to decide.
Analysis followed grounded theory procedures
(Strauss & Corbin 1998) for the identification of
categories and themes. All interviews were taped
and transcribed, and analysed in a hierarchy of
categories and themes. In qualitative methodology,
validity can be enhanced by the researcher being
explicit about their values, interests and experiences (Elliott et al. 1999). The interviewer and
analyst (ML) is a qualified learning disabilities
nurse with experience of community-based supported living and has worked with some members
in Botton Village for a separate agency providing
support, planning and training. Before fieldwork,
she was not known to 13 of the respondents, did
not live within the village and was in consequence
not considered by them to be an integral part of
the community.
The research did not involve National Health
Service patients or records, but was reviewed and
approved by York Local Research Ethics Committee
on a voluntary basis. Before approaching the Local
Research Ethics Committee, the researcher (ML)

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had written to each household in the village to

inform them of the research project and to encourage them to make contact with any questions they
may have regarding the research, while the possibility of carrying out research was discussed with
several individual community members, including
those responsible for communication outside the
village. In general, members of the community were
positive about the research, and no objections were
made. Consent procedures for individual interviews
began with a letter to each member of the sample
and their main co-worker, followed by a meeting
with them to discuss the research. The information
sheet was read to the members of the sample, who
were encouraged to describe the research and what
they were being asked to do to ensure that they had
fully understood. A second meeting was arranged
for completion of the consent form. Three people
initially selected for the sample chose not to take
part in this research at this stage and five new
respondents were randomly selected from the same
cohorts. No personal data on residents were collected from operational records other than residents names, addresses and the date that they
moved into the village.

Results
Botton Village
Botton Village was established to exemplify the
spiritual and philosophical ideas of Karl Knig, who
in turn drew on those of Rudolf Steiner. These
incorporate the central idea of the equal worth of
all people, expressed in the concept that every
human being has a healthy inner personality independent of their physical characteristics or disabilities (Busalle et al. 1996). In consequence, each
person is deemed to deserve the same respect, consideration and opportunities as everyone else, everyone is valued for their contribution to the life of the
community and abilities are nourished to grow into
achievements for a fulfilling life (Camphill Village
Trust 2002, page 2). Intentional communities,
according to Knig (1956), create a life for those
unable to find a place in the outside competitive
world, but can avoid becoming an asylum in which
people led passive and regulated lives if

men and women whose intelligence is according

to test standards supposed to be inferior, will live
and work with others of normal intelligence but
will not regard this as a barrier between them
(page 15).
Botton Village, therefore, was organised as a new
form of community living:
which will accept the individual, integral personality in such a way that the developmental otherness becomes variety instead of abnormality, that
diversity rather than uniformity becomes the
foundation of healthy social life. ( Weihs 1988,
page 19)
The formal aims of the village (Camphill Village
Trust 2002) are to achieve these objectives by providing a full life for its members, comprising:
1 A Cultural Life in which education and learning,
appreciation of the arts and music, concern for the
land and the environment and the fostering of
mutual understanding combine to offer the possibility for all members of the community to realise
their potential;
2 A Community Life in which the recognition of the
special qualities of every individual and the celebration of the Christian festivals through the year form
the basis for daily life, which brings together each
person as an equal in a common purpose; and
3 An Economic Life in which there is a separation of
work and money, whereby work is carried out
according to the need of the community and the
ability of each person, while peoples financial needs
are met on an individual and cooperative basis irrespective of the work done.
The village currently has 300 community
members (members with disabilities and
co-workers) in over 30 households. Households
provide an extended family setting comprising
co-workers (often a family with children) who live
alongside the members with disabilities and provide
support as required.
Members and co-workers of the village have a
working role to help in meeting the shared and
individual needs of the community. Employment is
provided by: five biodynamic farms providing the
meat, milk and vegetables for the community; a
creamery, bakery, food centre and meat store; and
various craft workshops that generate income for

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the village. Members and co-workers do not get

paid for their employment. It is a fundamental
principle that nobody living within a Camphill
Community receives remuneration directly for the
work done. Instead, each persons needs are met
according to individual circumstances (Abel 1997,
page 1). This includes both those with disabilities
and those who support them. Because nobody
receives a wage, members are able to work full time
while still being eligible for public welfare benefits.
Amenities in the village include a store, post
office, bookshop and gift shop, recycling workshop
and a coffee bar. There is a routine of daily life
within the community where communal meals with
the household are a crucial part of each day. There
is also a varied social and cultural life within the
community with people busily attending a variety of
social groups and events. Central to this is the
Village Hall, which serves as a meeting point for the
community. There is a non-denominational village
church and the passage of the year is marked by the
celebration of Christian festivals. Christianity is not
compulsory for community membership and some
co-workers and members do not attend religious
services.

Characteristics of respondents
The 15 respondents included 10 men and 5
women, with ages ranging between 38 to 78 years
(median = 50 years). The length of time that participants had lived at Botton Village ranged from 50 to
5 years (median = 25 years), and two respondents
were founding members of the community. Results
from the interviews indicated that seven had moved
to Botton from other Camphill communities, two
from a residential school and training centre, five
from their family home and one was unable to
remember. The reasons given for moving to the
community included a desire to live more independently, to return to North Yorkshire, needing somewhere to move after leaving school and placements
at home breaking down.

Households
Respondents were asked about how long they have
lived in their household, what role they played in it
and their likes and dislikes about home life. All but

two had lived in more than one household during

their residence in the village, and the median
number of households was three. The smallest
current household had five people in it while the
largest household was made up of 17 people including a family with young children. Living in large
congregate settings is traditionally regarded as limiting individuals opportunities for expressing choice
and decision-making ( Wehmeyer & Bolding
2001; Wehmeyer & Garner 2003). However,
respondents reported positively about living in a
large household:
I like that it is a big house, there is always
someone to talk to.
I like living in a big house, I like my bedroom
its nice and big.
Many respondents had lived alongside the same
families for many years and had watched their
co-workers children grow into young adults. They
reported that they particularly valued these relationships.
All 15 of the respondents were able to identify
what elements they liked about living in their
household. They described very active lives in which
they were able to enjoy leisure time while also
having responsibilities that enabled them to contribute towards their household. All but three had their
own set of tasks in their houses; these included collecting the milk, getting the post, helping cook
lunch and helping tidy up after meals. Leisure time
in the house included listening to the radio, reading
books and making things like embroidery or Christmas cards. When asked what they did not like about
their household, some respondents said nothing,
but the common concerns were a lack of space,
having too much to do, having too many people in
the house and being limited by the cold weather in
the winter:
I need a lot more room for me.
I dont like the winter very much. I get worried
about it being icy.
I dont like it when people argue, but other than
that I like it here very much.
Finally, the interviews explored whether people felt
listened to at home. Jahoda & Markova (2004)

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found that people living in a range of settings often

did not feel listened to by the people who supported them. By contrast, every respondent at
Botton Village said that they felt listened to, and
were able to identify how people listen to them and
what impact this has on their lives.
Yes I do, I feel I can talk to people or my house
parents if I need to.
They do listen. If you want something you go to
the houseparents and they will sort it out.

Employment
Current estimates (Department of Health 2001) are
that only 11% of people with an ID in England are in
employment. By contrast, all 15 respondents in the
survey had been in full-time employment in Botton
Village, although two were now semi-retired and
worked part time, and one had fully retired from
work. Current employment among respondents
included: animal husbandry, cooking, cleaning,
administration, shop assistant, making wooden toys
and restoring furniture, sorting recycled materials,
glass-engraving, making books, making dolls, making
jams and drinks in the food centre, and making bags
and other items in the weaving workshop. All but
four respondents worked in three or four different
workplaces each week. One respondent stated, I
dont want to always work in the same place.
The interviews indicated that work formed an
important part of peoples lives, which enabled
them to fully participate and contribute to the life
of the village. Almost all respondents were positive
about their work:
I enjoy looking after the animals and making sure
they are cleaned out properly.
I work hard, I want to work in the woodwork
shop.
I like the work, all the work I do.
Some said that they enjoyed the work because it
was easy compared with their work before they
came to the village:
Before I moved to Botton I worked with
Machines from 8.30 until 4. It was very cheap
labour and I wasnt paid much.

I had a job at a park which wasnt really nice. It

was a bit too much for me. It overstretched me
all the time.
The other main reason given for enjoying their job
was that they met people:
Mainly its the people. The people are nice.
When people were asked anything that they did not
like about their work, the most common complaint
was that sometimes they felt bossed about:
Sometimes I dont like being demanded to do
things thats all, and sometimes that can make
me a bit cross, but I do like work.
All respondents reported that they were listened
to at work, and knew who to talk to if they had
problems:
Yes I talk to the workgroup if I have a problem.
Yes I talk to the co-workers in the glass workshop
if there is a problem.
I am trying to decide which place is better to
work, Charles listened to me and helped me to
find a new place to work.
One respondent described how, 2 years earlier, he
had decided that he did not want to work anymore,
and had been supported in this decision.

Leisure
When asked about how they spent their time when
not at work, respondents spoke of two types of
leisure activity:
1 Activities that took place at home. These included
listening to the radio and music, reading books and
magazines, drawing, listening to the cricket and
football and knitting jumpers. Some of the reasons
people gave for enjoying activities like these were
because I enjoy my own company or that its nice
to relax.
2 Activities that took place away from home. This
included visiting friends houses, going to friends
houses for dinner, going for walks, playing games
with friends and, most commonly, going to the
coffee bar. It was clear that the coffee bar played a
central role in most of the respondents leisure time
as shown by the following quotes:

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I like the coffee bar because my friends always

come here. Its nice to talk to people and have
my usual canned drink.
I usually meet my friends there and we have a
nice time together.
Ten of the 15 respondents mentioned the coffee bar
as being somewhere that they regularly go to in
their leisure time.
Respondents were also asked about what more
formal activities they take part in. Several were
involved in community-focussed activities, such as
singing in the choir or taking part in plays. Many
were involved in the Advent fairy tale that is performed every year. From the interviews it became
clear that Christmas and Advent were important
times of the year and ones that have a shared
communal focus as the following quotes
illustrate:
I enjoy socialising with the village at Christmas.
I like sharing these times with other people in the
village.
An active social life is dependent on a sense of
personal safety in interacting with others. Reviewing previous research, Lang & Holmes (2001)
noted that people with ID have a significantly
greater risk of criminal victimisation than those
without a learning disability of a similar age, while
Whittell & Ramcharan (2000) found that experiences of abuse and victimisation were commonly
encountered in their local communities during
everyday activities, such as shopping, going for a
walk or going to work. Emerson et al. (1999) identified that people living in village communities
experience less incidences of victimisation and
verbal abuse than other people living in more
community-integrated environments. This was
reflected in responses such as:
Here we are very lucky. We can all go out. We are
able to go to the neighbours like we do. It is safe
here.
The overall picture of leisure for respondents was
that they experienced a busy life, which included a
range of activities, and in which they were able to
plan and organise themselves. The majority of these
activities were within the village. Six respondents

reported that they had been involved in activities

outside of the village, including one interviewee
who was presenting an art exhibition in York, while
the remainder regularly visited local towns or went
to a swimming pool.

Friendships
Apart from two people who said that they preferred
their own company, respondents described a wide
network of friendships. When asked what they
enjoyed about their friendships, most said that they
enjoyed the company of other people with whom
they could share things. Some also talked about
long-term friendships with people that provided a
lot of emotional support:
Friends are very important yes, you know, to
spend time with people and things.
Yes I have masses of friends in the village. I have
close friends in lots of different houses.
Robert will look after me and we do things
together, he helps me know what is going on in
the village. We always have a meeting when we
walk down the road to decide what we are going
to do tomorrow.
I can tell a lot of things to my friends that I
wouldnt tell other people that I know.
I like having people around to do things with.
Friends play an important part in my life, you
know, it is nice to know that people really like
you, its nice to have friends to talk to and keep
you company and not to feel secluded.
Interviews explored how respondents spent time
with their friends. Most commonly people met their
friends in the coffee bar or went round to other
peoples houses to chat and spend time together.
Friendships appear to have developed through
living and working alongside other people. These
were almost exclusively with other adults with an
ID. Relationships with co-workers were also close,
but these resembled more parental and family relationships than friendships.
Although respondents said that friendships were
an important part of their lives, there were times
when friendships could be strained:

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One minute we are friends and the next minute

you find that we are shouting at each other and
then we are all friends again.

Religion
Previous research (Hoeksema 1995; Azmi et al.
1997; Churchill 2000; Swinton 2002; Turner et al.
2004) have found that people with ID are able to
express strong and positive religious identities. Religious expression and the celebration of Christian
festivals are central of the daily life at Botton
Village, and six of the 15 respondents regularly
attended church and regarded attendance an important part of their lives. Reasons given included:
Doing the bread and wine, doing communion is
important.
I enjoy attending church with my friends, it is
both spiritual side and social side that is
important.
One respondent did not attend the church in the
village because they were Methodist, and said that
they enjoyed the social side of attending a different
church. The remaining respondents all attended
church on festivals, such as Easter and Christmas,
as well as at weddings between co-workers and
christenings of their children. Everybody interviewed also reflected upon how the church takes a
central role in the social life of the village over the
course of the year.

A community identity
Interviews concluded by asking respondents to
summarise their experience of living in the village,
specifically: whether they felt included and important and were listened to; and what they considered
the good and bad parts of living there. Responses
indicate that a sense of inclusion was determined
mainly by taking part in shared activities in a
variety of roles:
I like to be noticed not unnoticed. I dont mean
showing off, but I like people to know that I am
here. I dont want to feel separate from everything.
I feel as though I am very important because it is
an important job that I do, it is important

because it is also to do with fattening the stock

which comes back as meat which is then distributed through the village.
The work I do is important to the village, helping
to clean all the houses and everything.
The interviewees described having a positive
experience of being listened to within the village
and how they feel able to influence decisions.
I do feel included yes, because I can join in
neighbourhood meetings and talk about what I
think should happen in the village.
Well if you have a point to make you raise it at
the neighbourhood meetings. It works all right,
yeah.
Yes, if I have any problems I speak to my houseparent and they help me to sort things out.
Respondents said that the good things about living
in the village were: having a job within the community; socialising with friends and knowing a lot of
people; living in the countryside; knowing your
neighbours; living with people who are supportive
and caring; having the coffee bar; and living alongside families. As noted above, this intensity of
social relationships could have disadvantages when
members argued or knew too much of each
others lives. This was mentioned by five of the
15 respondents:
Sometimes it can be a little fraught, but mostly it
is good and you work your differences out and
when you have sorted those out then you are on
top. It is nice that way we get on well together
most times.
A number were able to reflect upon how living at
Botton is of central importance to them:
It is my home and always will be.
Its good here, it is my home. I enjoy everything.
The family I live with and the work that I do.

Conclusion
The generalisability of this research is limited by
the small sample, which is drawn from a single
intentional community. As noted above, intentional

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communities are very diverse, and not all resemble

Botton Village in its size or pattern of organisation.
The interpretation of qualitative data can be influenced by the subjective experiences of researchers.
Observation of the high levels of activity and sociability among the residents of the village provoked
both authors to regard the communal life and
organisation of the village more positively than they
initially expected. It would therefore be useful for
this research to be replicated in other intentional
communities. Nevertheless, the study does provide
the first report of the attitudes of people with ID
about their lives in an intentional community. The
picture they give is a life of activity and friendship,
in which people with ID feel secure and have a
sense of being a useful member of a community
that responds to their needs. As in many villages
and communities in society in general, these advantages are balanced by some loss of privacy.
These results therefore broadly confirm those of
Emerson et al. (1999) concerning the quality of life
for residents in intentional communities and their
degree of satisfaction with where they live. They
also suggest some explanations:
1 The absence of the overt subordination of residents to
staff. The founding philosophy of the Camphill
Movement emphasises the spiritual and essential
equality of its disabled and non-disabled members,
and this is enacted in communal sharing of the villages income and the operation of joint decisionmaking. For both members and co-workers, work
and remuneration operate on the principle that
each contributes according to their abilities and
each is rewarded according to their needs. Disabled
members share domestic and family lives with
co-workers and work with them in the various
forms of employment in the village.
2 The facilitation of friendship with other people with
an ID. The reported high rate of social interactions
with other members combined with the perceived
personal safety of life in the village facilitate the creation of trust and friendship for people with an ID,
while also making it easier for them to sustain
friendships than would be the case with some dispersed housing schemes. People with an ID in all
residential settings typically make friends with other
people with an ID (Emerson & McVilly 2004),
although they often encounter obstacles in sustaining friendships because of the cost of transport and

problems with communication (Abbott &

McConkey 2006). By contrast, an intentional
community like Botton Village offers a larger
clustering of potential friends with the opportunity
to meet in workplace and informal settings, and
ease of communication to enable friendships to be
sustained.
3 High levels of meaningful employment. The lack of
formal employment contracts in the village for both
members and co-workers obviates the barriers to
formal employment encountered by many people
with an ID (Beyer 2001; Wistow & Schneider 2003).
As a result, all respondents (apart from one who had
retired) were able to work full time in a range of
unskilled and skilled work essential to the daily life
and economy of the village, while also exercising
choice over where they were able to work. Those
interviewed in the study regarded their work as a
means of sustaining the daily life and economy of the
village, and reported that they were formally engaged
in making communal and personal decisions.
4 A sense of community. The combination of shared
participation in economically sustaining the village,
participating in its decisions, shared participation in
village rituals and religious practice, and the close
network of friendships provided to people with an
ID in Botton Village appears to enable its members
to re-affirm their sense of community identity and
belonging.
This pattern of organisation and functioning contrasts strikingly with that found elsewhere in most
residential care and supported living services for
people with an ID. Support staff in such facilities
are employed and remunerated to carry out officially specified duties during designated hours of
work. The provider organisations that employ them
(many of which are now profit-making enterprises)
compete for public funds paid through a sequence
of short-term contracts with governmental agencies.
Reductions in public finance and the power of governmental agencies as monopoly purchasers have
the effect of reducing expenditure/client (Commission for Social Care Inspection 2008). Provider
organisations respond by employing many of their
staff (particularly those in day-to-day contact
with their clients) on remuneration close to the
minimum wage. This in turn makes it difficult to
recruit or retain staff suitable for this type of work
(Hatton et al. 1997), but may also generate among

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M. Randell & S. Cumella People with an intellectual disability in an intentional community

staff an alienation characteristic of industrial

process work. However, there has been to date very
little research that has looked at how care staff in
traditional residential services themselves interpret
the demands of their day-to-day work. This indicates a need for further ethnographic research comparing different lives in different residential settings
for people with an ID.
A further contrast between the ethos and organisation of Botton Village and traditional support services for people with an ID is the celebration of
community. The village is an intentional community
approximating to Tnnies category of gemeinschaft, with strong emotional relationships (in this
case based on a system of extended families), moderate divisions of labour and shared communal
effort in working and living together (Tnnies
1955). In a review of research on community integration, Cummins & Lau (2003) concluded that
people with ID need a sense of community in
which they feel part of a readily available, supportive and dependable social structure. They propose
that this is unlikely to be derived from encounters
in the work, commercial or recreational environments used by the general community, but within
families and among groups of other people with ID.
This type of community does not of course correspond with the attenuated sense of the term used
in social policy in England to mean any habitation
not located in a hospital. Indeed, the latter use of
the term increasingly conveys the very opposite of
the meaning of community in the sense of gemeinschaft. The rise of consumerism is associated with
an increased social fragmentation (Putnam 2000),
in which other citizens are viewed as a threat to
personal safety rather than a source of friendship
and comfort (Furedi 2002). It has been proposed
(Cumella 2008) that in societies dominated by consumerism, people with an ID may be increasingly
perceived by others as negative consumers undeserving of public expenditure.
People with an ID are as varied as the rest of the
population in their personality and social preferences, and it is unlikely that the kind of intentional
community offered by Botton Village would appeal
to all, no more than all people wish to live in their
own one-person flats or in the suburbs of large
cities. This is inconvenient for those with a clear
and simple vision of what constitutes a normal

life, but human diversity has always been an

impediment to social engineering.

Acknowledgements
This research was completed for the degree of MSc
In Intellectual (Learning) Disability Studies at the
University of Birmingham. The authors gratefully
acknowledge the support provided by Dr Qulsom
Fazil, dissertation supervisor, and Paul Abel of
Botton Village for their advice.

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Accepted 7 May 2009

2009 The Authors. Journal Compilation 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd