We are very pleased to share with you the latest edition of CRUcial Times. This is our 56th edition and it explores the idea of creating a home, one person at a time.
The authors in this edition do not try to gloss over the challenges of establishing a real home for a person with a disability , or of supporting someone in this task. The stories are practical and real, and a common theme from all our authors is that a real home is more than just a physical place, and absolutely worth the effort required.
After the last edition of CRUcial Times looked at how a home can be a foundation for a life in community, in this edition we wanted to showcase some examples of how people have gone about being supported to live in their own home. Home is such an important topic because our home is a central part of our lives and deeply connected to our identities. While secure housing is linked to our ideas of safety and security in life, to feel at home also requires a feeling of control and the freedom that comes with privacy and with intimacy.
We would like to thank the authors, Sue Boyce, Bronwyn Moloney and Bronia Holyoak for sharing their stories and experiences for this edition, and to Jeremy Ward for generously allowing us to include an edited excerpt from his book. In a shameless cross promotion, Jeremy’s wonderful book The Shouted Goodbye is available for sale in the CRU bookshop. In the book Jeremy goes into more detail about the strategies that enabled his daughter to live in her own home.
We also thank the organisation TASH in the United States for permission to republish Patricia Fratangelo’s article on life sharing, and Parity magazine, published by the Council to Homeless Persons, for permission to republish Cameron Skinner and Deb Rouget’s article A Home of My Own.
If you would prefer to have a hard copy mailed to you then please let us know and we will happily arrange for that. We do not routinely do large mail outs these days as many people prefer to receive material electronically, but we are more than happy to post you a copy if preferred. If you are having accessibility issues with the attached file, then please find a version with simplified formatting on our website. If you need the articles in this edition in a different format to make them more accessible then please get in touch and will we arrange this for you.
You are welcome to share this edition of CRUcial Times on to anyone you think may be interested and don’t forget there are 55 previous editions of CRUcial Times available on our website.