This ethnography examines how autonomy is produced within community-based disability support. Drawing on nearly four years of participant observation as a direct support professional in a shared home in Durham, North Carolina, I analyze the lives of two adult women with disabilities, their support staff, and the family and institutional networks surrounding them. I argue that independence in disability services is not an individual condition, but a collaborative and contested achievement made possible through labor, relationships, and bureaucracy. Documentation practices such as care plans and daily “grids” do more than record care; they shape what care becomes by directing attention toward what can be measured. At the same time, the embodied and emotional labor of direct support professionals remains essential yet often invisible. By focusing on everyday negotiations of choice, safety, and support, this thesis challenges ideals of independence as self-sufficiency and shows instead that autonomy is relational, fragile, and continuously produced through care.
