Transforming Residential Disability Services in Czechia Under Neoliberalism: Barriers, Tensions and Opportunities to Strengthen Rights-Based Social Work

Abstract This article examines the dynamics of deinstitutionalization of residential services for people with disabilities in the Czech Republic, focusing on barriers, tensions, and opportunities for social work to support disability rights. Deinstitutionalization, understood as the development of community-based services replacing large residential facilities, is analyzed across three interconnected levels: political, organizational, and everyday practice. Drawing on 62 semi-structured interviews with people with disabilities, social workers, activists, and regional representatives, complemented by field journals and analyzed using situational analysis, the study shows that at the political level, deinstitutionalization is constrained by fragile commitment, project-based funding, and neoliberal fiscal rationality. At the organizational level, competing care rationalities—paternalistic protection, neoliberal activation, and relational, person-centered practice—produce diverse interpretations of community-based services. At the everyday level, social workers navigate tensions between promoting independence and enforcing responsibility. Autonomy emerges as contested between competence-based and interdependence-oriented approaches. The article contributes to international debates on deinstitutionalization under neoliberalism and the role of social work. It emphasizes the need for political advocacy for systemic changes in disability services, the adoption of relational and rights-based frameworks of social work practice, and the recognition of interdependence as a way of rethinking autonomy. Such approaches can strengthen the rights of people with disabilities in post-socialist contexts, where deinstitutionalization remains an ongoing and uncertain process.