When my son, who has an intellectual disability, was born over 52 years ago, I knew I would give him a good life, that he would be happy, and that people would find him lovely. I visited the care facilities of the time and saw ‘holding centres’ and children and adults who didn’t seem particularly happy. It was also the time when my husband and I wanted to build our own home; it would be open-plan, without many walls, with spaces where we could live, work and cook, and where we wanted to see our children grow up happily. We ended up having four.

Meanwhile, the idea of building a short-stay centre for children and adults with intellectual disabilities began to take shape. And just as we lived ourselves, we would also (unlike the ‘bed houses’ of the time, with dormitories and supervision rooms for around forty ‘guests’ each and one or two carers – or rather, guards) build houses for ‘our guests’ with a living room, an open-plan kitchen, a sitting area and two bedrooms for seven guests each.