Rolf Bergfors, ILI Board member has left us

Rolf Bergfors, Founding Chairperson of the Gothenburg Cooperative for Independent Living, GIL, and one of the Swedish and European Independent Living pioneers passed away last Saturday. Rolf helped found ENIL, the European Network on Independent Living, and ILI, the Independent Living Institute. He served on ILI’s board until his untimely death.

Rolf was one of us who, during the 1970’s and 1980’s, depended on personal assistance and found themselves stuck in professional-run, semi-institutional and monopolistic care structures that limited our lives. Unlike most, however, Rolf was able to see the reasons for the shortcomings of the housing and assistance solutions that politicians, disability organizations and the Swedish public expected us to gratefully accept. Unlike the established disability organizations that worked “within the system” asking for more training for assistants
Rolf was one of the few Swedish pioneers who set to work to build up a completely different solution: we wanted disabled people to be at the top and not at the bottom of the hierarchy. Together we showed how people who depend on personal assistance can run their own personal assistance services, achieve much better service quality and take charge of their lives.

A whole lot of work still needs to be done in this direction. For this we would need more people with Rolf’s vision, stubborn commitment and dry humour.

Adolf Ratzka

(2006?)