The Careless Society: Community and Its Counterfeits

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Summary: How social service agencies destroy community supports.
Review: As someone who works in a nonprofit social service agency, I was handed McKnight's book by the executive director of a local foundation. It made for illuminating reading. McKnight explains how agencies isolate and target populations for their own convenience - determining the needs of their "client" rather than helping individuals express their own dreams and desires and working toward solutions. This is a "must read" for agencies whose goal is to build caring communities, allowing people with disabilities to determine their futures for themselves. Of particular interest is the section on grief counseling, describing how the professional grief vampire isolates their "clients" from the circles of support provided by friends and neighbors that have nurtured the grieving for generations.

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Summary: an explanation of our struggle to be empowered
Review: this book is a brilliant analysis of the struggle users of services face when trying to find help to live a full life. The sentence which I will always remember is 'The problem we face is not one of weak services, but weak communities'. As a disabled person I found the willingness to confront the dependency of able-bodied providers on our manufactured 'needs' refreshing and enlightening. John McKnights thinking about the nature of communities and how to begin to re-build them very stimulating, particularly as his vision includes me as a community builder. Read it!