Commentary on Duncan Mitchell: A chapter in the history of nurse education: learning disability nursing and The Jay Report

Abstract

The Jay Report (1979) is considered to be amongst one of the most significant and reforming pieces of social policy aimed at redefining the structure of learning disability services in England, Scotland, and Wales. Its importance in terms of the promotion of ordinary living and the need to adopt a sound service philosophy based on the principles of normalisation, that emphasised the rights and individuality of people with learning disabilities cannot be underestimated. It built upon the recommendations of DHSS (1971) Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped, a White Paper that advocated a move from hospital to community based services for people with learning disabilities and was also a precursor to the NHS and Community Care Act (1990). Yet it is the recommendations within this policy concerning the future of learning disability nursing that form the basis of this current paper although as its author, Duncan Mitchell suggests, nurse education, service reform and changing political contexts are inevitably linked. Although The Jay Report (1979) represented only one of a number of milestones in a chequered history of learning disability nursing reaching as far back as the Nurses Registration Act (1919), Mitchell deems it be one of the most controversial, owing to the extent of public debate it generated. It is this latter theme that runs throughout the paper. Mitchell’s paper could be considered significant for a number of reasons. As a piece