Print functionality varies between browsers. Printable page generated Friday, 12 Nov , Bedfordshire Mencap Introduction A major pressure for change in the way that social welfare services were provided and organised in the latter half of the twentieth century came from the voluntary sector.
The audio clips were recorded in Participants in the audio clips: Brenda Nickson , founder member of the branch, whose son was born in ; Fay , a near-contemporary of Brenda's, who played a major role in getting holiday accommodation for the branch's members; Ann and Michael Tombs , in their fifties at the time of the recording, they have played a key role in Bedford Mencap for many years; Beryl , who has been a volunteer welfare visitor for many years; Kim , whose son was 16 at the time of the recording in , and is one of the few younger people in the branch.
Learning outcomes After studying this course, you should be able to: understand that individuals can promote change give examples of how the establishment of Bedfordshire Mencap has offered support to parents of children with learning difficulties. One parent, Rene Harris, recalled the impact Judy Fryd had on her: Yes, yes she was the founder of the movement.
Quoted in Walmsley, , p. Clip 1 Brenda Nickson, whose son has a learning disability, talks about her own experiences, and about how the organisation was set up. Download this audio clip. Clip 1. Skip transcript: Clip 1 Transcript: Clip 1. Helen Robinson. First, one of the founder members talks about her experiences of caring for her son with a learning disability, before the advent of the society, and how the society was set up.
Well my name's Brenda Nickson, and I had my son in , and I was just told that he was a mongol, as they were called in those days, and there would be no future for him. He'd probably die when he was five. He wouldn't probably, well shall I say, he'd probably not live longer than five, and the best thing for us to do was to put him in an institution, which of course Of course, I think I spent the first two years crying. And we were just left then. And at that time, of course, nobody acknowledged you to any great extent.
My mother-in-law wouldn't acknowledge that there was anything different from Roger that except he had a bad heart. And I was referred to Hammersmith, and he went in for the investigation to see X-ray the heart, to see what holes were in it. When we went to collect him, the specialist said that he was very sorry but he couldn't do anything for Roger and, in any case, he would still be a mongol. And it was the last remark that really shook us because we knew perfectly well he was going to be a mongol.
That could never be repaired. In those days, the baby clinic was once a month in the village. And the health visitor notified my husband and I that there was going to be a meeting in the town of people interested in setting up a branch of the Society for the Parents of Backward and Handicapped Children, and would we like to go?
I can't remember how many people there were there. I was the only one with a baby. All the others had practically, you know, growing up children. And then the There was no such thing as respite care or carers, or anything at all.
There was just nothing. And so the aim was to see about that You see, respite care was the culmination of a long effort, because the first sort of respite was having a night out at a club. That was one evening that the parents had without their offspring. And that was the first sort of respite for the parents, to get initiated into letting their children go somewhere where they weren't in charge of them. And that was another thing, you see, and the society Brenda's husband, Jim, became chairman of the society and, along with other members, he worked hard to improve the facilities and services available to their children.
As Fay Bunyan explains, respite for parents and breaks for families were their priorities. Whenever parents got together, one need appeared to be They could have a holiday in private without being stared at, where they could take the other children as well.
Many of their children never had a holiday, especially the more handicapped ones. And we fancied a caravan or a holiday chalet There it is. So I had the job of furnishing it, with the help of quite a lot of local businesses that were very, very generous.
Some parents said they wouldn't use the chalet, and they gradually came round to it. Brenda is certain that, when it came to establishing provision for parents and children, the voluntary sector laid the ground work for the statutory services. A lot of the services that are there now really are developed from the fact that this started as voluntary services. I mean, who would have thought of them putting a swimming pool in Saint John's?
I mean, we used to take the boys, you see Show transcript Hide transcript. Interactive feature not available in single page view see it in standard view. Clip 2 Michael and Anne Tombs talk about how Mencap provoked changes in care provision for people with learning disabilities. Clip 2. Skip transcript: Clip 2 Transcript: Clip 2. After they became aware that their son, Sandy, had a learning disability, Anne and Michael Tombs also became involved in Bedfordshire Mencap.
They believed the society did provoke changes in care provision for those with learning difficulties. Yeah, well I think Mencap's been very important, right from the very beginning. As it developed, it did get a lot of people involved, whose relatives were in the institutions. I refuse to call them hospitals, because they're not really hospitals at all. More than 50 charity umbrella bodies launch group aimed at lobbying government more effectively.
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Email address. Services of course were very limited for people with learning disabilities and their families. Very often institutional care was seen as the only option and there was very little attempt to support children and families in the community.
They are of all ages. There are more than 26, such children in England and Wales alone. How can we best look after these children? Is it possible to develop their potentialities, to arouse them, to give them some interest in life. MABLE Instead of sitting in the ward all the time you'd go and stand or sit by the gate and people just used to stand there and laugh at us. These children have come from their wards to the training centre where teachers take over. Bead threading is liked by most children.
MABLE They had the school there but because they say I couldn't learn they only made baskets and puzzles and doing colouring but they didn't teach you to read or any of that, like you've been taught.
RUSSELL Mable's comments make very sad hearing but they're typical of the time because many parents were told that the best thing they could do was to put their child away and forget him. And many parents did not have the confidence or the support to keep their child in the community. In the s and s educational opportunities were very, very limited, the junior training centres were designed to impart a few very basic skills but they were not what we would now regard as educational opportunities for children.
As most of these children will be given the opportunity to go to a senior training centre when they are 16 or 17 their training at the junior centre inevitably becomes more and more concerned with the development of manual dexterity to fit them for the work they will be taught to carry out there.
Our son Simon had been diagnosed as having a learning disability and we thought we were bringing him back to some really good educational opportunities.
We were therefore devastated to realise that in fact he was regarded as ineducable - the Education Act had seen to that. And the Inner London Education Authority was obliged to send us a letter with a glowing red sentence in it to say that Simon was ineducable and there was no point in registering at a local primary school.
We were lucky, in our London borough the then medical officer of health thought this was a nonsense and paid for education from the health budget, hardly possible now.
But in many other areas the junior training centre was the only option. In the s there was emerging interest in the importance of early education for the development of children with learning disabilities but provision was very patchy and parents had to do a lot of the work themselves.
In Camden a group of parents under the umbrella of Mencap set up their own nursery, we housed it in the rather grand sitting room of a Hampstead House of a grandparent of a young lad in the group.
Our long term ambition, which we achieved, was to move the nursery and co-locate it within a brand new day nursery in the borough, so that our children could mix with, learn from and learn alongside other children in the area. Dr Ludlow, of course, had a similar idea. Dr Ludlow was directly responsible for creating this nursery group.
We do encourage mothers to bring young siblings that are normal and we also have a number of voluntary helpers who come to the clinic with their own normal children in order that we may have normal children and handicapped children mix together and integrate in. RUSSELL Of course the progress that was made with the Education Act and the development of some very good early years in school services made everybody think - what next.
And Mencap broke new ground when it opened Pengwern Hall because not only did it focus on independent living and the acquisition of life skills but it demonstrated that people with learning disabilities could actually do useful jobs in the community.
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