Organisations, Structures and Community Care, 1971–2001: From Care to Citizenship?

Abstract

This chapter examines organisations and structures during a momentous period in learning disability history Organisations and structures alone can be rather dry, so the chapter’s theme will be the extent to which citizenship was furthered by the various frameworks in place. We are discussing a basically positive period in learning disability history. As we will see from the life stories in Part IV, it was a period when life improved overall for people with learning difficulties, when people had greater opportunities for an ordinary life, and social inclusion, and when citizenship emerged as a policy theme. It saw the virtual ending of large state-run long-stay hospitals as a residential option and the inclusion of children of all abilities in mainstream schools as an attainable goal. However, the chapter will also explore some considerable continuity beneath the rhetoric of policy. The authors of the 1971 White Paper said of their proposed shift from hospital to community care that ‘no new policy is involved for local authority services. What is needed is faster progress to overcome the present deficiencies’ (DHSS, 1971, p. 43).