A step in the right direction: people with learning difficulties moving into the community

Abstract

It is more than a decade since the government announced that Regional Health Authorities (RHAs) should close their long-stay mental handicap hospitals. The North West Regional Health Authority's (NWRHA) commitment to the resettlement of people with learning difficulties into ordinary housing in the community pre-dated the government's cost-driven initiative. In 1982 the Region published A Model District Service, a strategy document supported by both the District Health Authorities (DHAs) and the local social services departments, in which it set out a user-centred philosophy for community services for people with learning difficulties. This paper is based on an evaluation of the impact of that strategy, the central part of which was an examination of the experiences of 102 people who moved out of three large mental handicap hospitals between March 1990 and March 1991. The research team's primary concern was to obtain information from the people with learning difficulties who had moved into the community. Unstructured interviews were conducted with those with an adequate level of communication, photographs were used to assist those with very limited communication; Observations were made over a period of time of those without any communication skills at all. Interviews were also conducted with the formal care worker in the community and, where there was one, a relative who had meaningful contact with their learning disabled relative. The research found that the move into the community offered the people concerned a much improved quality of life, with greater independence and choice in everyday living. However, there is a need to build on this so that people's life experiences are not merely better than those offered by the already discredited institutions, but so that they can become fully integrated and respected members of society.