This paper will explore the power of history in affecting contemporary caring practice. Drawing on the author's personal experience as a social worker, researcher and parent of a daughter with learning disabilities, the article will consider the ways in which the experience of (and to an extent, nostalgia for) the ?heady days? of de-institutionalisation continues to influence staff perceptions about their work. In doing so, this article will critique normative notions of choice and control that are at the heart of (...) current moves towards self-directed support and personalised services. The author contends that staff who support people who have learning disabilities need something with which to compare and validate their practice. In the 1980s the hospitals were easily identifiable as something negative with which practice ?in the community? could be compared. In the twenty-first century the need for a comparator is still there, but the hospitals and many of their associated structures such as Adult Training Centres have gone. The paper argues that the family can be a contemporary structure against which current practice can be measured. (shrink)