Árki Vanessza:

“We seriously wanted to try it” Ágnes Zalabai’s work on the development of Personal Assistance


2023/2 | #empowerment #narrative #personal assistance #self-assertion #social service #support service | DOI: 10.31287/FT.hu.2023.2.4

Péterné Zalabai (1942–), Ágnes is one of the founders of the Independent Living Movement in Hungary, founder of the Hungarian Motivation Foundation (Motiváció Alapítvány), social worker, consultant in rehabilitation environment design. She devoted herself to the development of several services necessary for Independent Living, such as the Personal Assistance system. In 2019, we interviewed Ágnes. She told us about her life story and work: how she came to the field of disability issues and what topics she tried to establish in Hungary. She reminisced about the first steps of the Hungarian Personal Assistance system and gave us advice for the future.

The following narrative is an edited version of the two-hour interview conducted in March 2019. The inter￾viewers were Dániel Csángó and Anikó Sándor.