‘I am myself!’ – Personal Assistance Relationships – Results of a Qualitative Study

This study examined the relationship between people with disabilities and their personal assistants. Personal assistance (hereafter referred to as PA) changes the prejudice towards people with disabilities. Through the support of personal assistants, they become employers and can live a self-determined life. In Hungary, this service is not state funded, the employers finance the service by themselves. The methodology of the research was qualitative and participatory, as the research partner is a PA user herself. The questions of the research were as follows: What kind of relations can be detected between the Hungarian PA users and their assistants compared to the findings of the international literature? What are the tendencies that relationships between Hungarian parties in PA show? We conducted semi-structured, dyadic individual interviews with both employers (users) and employees of the PA service. The results were generated by a content analysis of the interviews. Our findings show that the nature of the relationships between the employers (users) and employees could be categorised as informal friendships and professional relationships at the same time. However, the connection cannot be described by a single category, because of its complexity. In the interviews, professionalism was mentioned as more important for personal assistants, whereas employers rather highlighted the relevance of friendship. The different experiences of the parties are evident, as assistants mentioned more conflicts than their employers. The result and novelty of the research is that this study is one of the first empirical researches on this topic in Hungary. Additionally, the participatory research method supports the user-led development of the PA service.