An exploration of an ethics of care in relation to people with intellectual disability and their family caregivers in the Cape Town metropole in South Africa

People with intellectual disability (ID) are defined as a group by their need for lifelong support. For the most part, it falls to family caregivers to provide this support. This paper begins with a critique of a human rights perspective in dealing with family care and argues for an ethics of care in understanding the support needs for families and adults with ID. This perspective is then applied to a study that was undertaken in 2013 in the Cape Town metropole in the Western Cape Province of South Africa on the views of people with ID and their families on meeting care needs in this context. Sixteen adults with ID and 38 family caregivers were interviewed and the data was analyzed by means of a thematic analysis. The themes that emerged were: (a) the need for “another mother,” (b) protection from crime, violence and abuse, (c) maximizing independence, (d) accessing resources and (e) community integration. These themes are discussed in the light of an ethics of care, using Tronto’s (1993) elements of care as an analytic tool to explore how care needs might be thought of in the study context.