Achieving Meaningful Inclusion for People with Profound and Multiple Learning Disabilities

Abstract

Those of us who have worked in learning disability services long enough need little convincing about the monumental strides that have been taken during the last 40 years, and the vastly changing values and beliefs that have inspired that progress. They have been spearheaded by people such as Jack Tizard. Forty years ago the very words inclusion, participation and decision-making would have barely been spoken in connection with people with a learning disability. They would have had little or no say about where they spent their life and, especially those who lived in institutions, would have had little influence on even the smallest decisions that affected their daily lives, such as the clothes they wore or the food they ate. In 2006 Mencap will be celebrating its Jubilee, and so this is also a time for reflecting on the changes that we have made as an organisation. We, too, have come on quite a journey, from our beginnings as a parent-led organisation when the fight was on to ensure that all children had a right to an education, to current times when, in 2000, we appointed our first trustee with a learning disability. With a changed constitution, we also moved to a national assembly structure, a third of whose participants are people with a learning disability. Over the years we have seen policies and practices moving steadily towards a rights-based agenda, based on inclusion and participation for people with a learning disability. It is now recognised that people with a learning disability have the same rights as everyone else (United Nations, 1971, 1975) and that participating in decisions that affect one’s life is part of one’s autonomy and personal integrity.