Contemporary Accommodation Services for People with Psychiatric Disabilities – the Simple Taxonomy for Supported Accommodation (STAX-SA) Applied and Discussed in a Swedish Context

Abstract

This article focuses on the stock of accommodation service units for people with psychiatric disabilities in Sweden and the classification of supported accommodation. We examined 122 units in 12 municipalities in Sweden and classified them according to the Simple Taxonomy for Supported Accommodation (STAX-SA). We found an obvious variation in the field and a movement into a recovery-oriented direction and towards individuality. There is an emphasis on Move-On that seems to expand into and beyond floating outreach support, and there is a relaxation of service units' boundaries concerning commitment and target groups. The correspondence to STAX-SA was quite low (48%), and the applicability to 'real world' services was not satisfactory. When capturing variation and change in a rich dataset, STAX-SA is too reductive. However, STAX-SA was a successful point of departure in the analysis that opened up for identifying diversities and movement. We suggest some adjustments to increase its applicability.