Services for intellectually handicapped of all ages

Press, Volume CXII, Issue 32847, 22 February 1972, Page 12

Services for intellectually handicapped of all ages

The Intellectually Handicapped Children’s Society is interested in helping the intellectually handicapped of all ages and of all degrees of severity. At present, in fact, the society is providing services for more adults than children.

This is seen by the president of the society (Dr D. M. G. Beasley) as the pattern of the future. “With the increased life expectancy of the intellectually handicapped. the time will come when there will be two or three times as many adults as children and there will be some hundreds more each year reaching adulthood, with individual lives to be led with varying degrees of independence, in parental homes, in the society’s hostels and homes, or in hospital,” he says.

There is no doubt that most handicapped people do best in their own homes, or if alternative accommodation is required, in residential facilities of the kind provided by the society, and that only a few intellectually handicapped persons, usually because of additional handicaps or severe disability, require hospital care, Dr Beasley says.

If, however, it is agreed that they generally do best and grow and develop in as nearly normal a fashion as possible when maintained in the open community, it must also be agreed that this philosophy of care becomes merely a pious wish, or so much humbug, unless full support is given to the handicapped and their families by the development of community services, says Dr Beasley. “For the intellectually handicapped, we want realistic goals of achievement in work and play, opportunities for self-expression and development,' the encouragement of personal possessions, and the fostering of individuality and dignity,” he says. “This is what the society’s services seek to do, as part of the provision of normal daily life for the intellectually handicapped adult—-

sleeping in one’s own room, dressing in the morning, family meals, off to work, home at night, week-end and evening relaxation of recreation, holidays, family days,

, frustrations, satisfactions, , joys, sorrows. There are , choices to be made, wishes i worked out wherever feasible, living in a world of men , and women.”