When thinking about 100 years of
Learning Disability Nursing, we also
think about those people with learning
disabilities who have been on that
journey with us. 100 years ago today
institutional care was the main
provision for people with learning
disabilities. It started off very often
with the best intentions. The word 'asylum'
for example means a place of safety and
that was originally the thinking behind
developing those institutions. The
institutions became quite self-contained;
they had their own farms, they had their
own laundries for example, so that there
was never any need for people with
learning disabilities to visit their
local community, and there was seldom
cause for people from the local
community to visit them, unless they had
a relative there that they were there to
visit.
1913 saw the publication of the Mental
Deficiency Act, which included
terminology that today we would find
deeply offensive. Terms such as 'imbecile'
or 'feeble-minded' for example, which we
just would not use today, we use
much more value in terminology today,
terminology changes over periods of time.
One thing that the Act did do is to
compulsorily detain some individuals
under this Act, who were taken away from
their friends and families and put into
the institutions. The thinking of the day
was heavily influenced by Eugenics and
Eugenics was an ideology that thought
that disability, both mental and physical,
could be eradicated from society, so this
thinking helped to underpin the
development of the institutions, so not
only were people segregated from their
communities and their families, they were
also segregated within those
institutions, so men and women for
example, were separated from each other.
The 1920s to the 1940s saw expansion of
the institutions both in size and in
number. These institutions were homes not only to adults but also to children with
learning disabilities. In 1944 the
Education Act stated that children with
learning disabilities were in-educable,
so of course these children who were not
eligible to an education, lived in the
institutions. So you can see from this
that the Eugenics even though it was
becoming discredited at the time, were
still having an influence on policy.
The move to community care from
institutional care came slowly. In the
1950s there was concern that more than
half of the NHS beds available were
being taken up by people with mental
health problems or people with learning
disabilities.
