Residential institutions for people with disabilities

are supposedly a thing of the past in this country. Instead we have what are supposed to be nice "homely" house size units with small groups of living in them.

It doesn't work. It should work but it doesn't work. 

The idea sounds great in theory. It is an idea along the same lines as making sure that children with disabilities, any sort of disabilities at all, go to the same schools as anyone else. That doesn't work either.

No, before you start telling me I am wrong and that it is a matter of resources and educating everyone else and that "they" have a "right" to be treated the same way as everyone else, let me explain.

I know something about "special" schools. I taught in three (in one I was also the unofficial head)  and I had a great deal more to do with three more. They were not perfect places but all of them had something very positive to offer the children and young people who attended them. 

And one of them was outstanding. It took in a range of children with widely differing physical and intellectual capabilities...and that was what was emphasised - capabilities. There were children who were barely able to learn, children who were profoundly deaf, others who were hard of hearing, others with sight impairments and children with complex learning needs. All of them had some degree of brain injury. It was a very challenging place.

I was talking to a former student of the school yesterday. He was trying to remember the name of a former student, one much lower down the school than he was. 

"He did very well. I am sure he went to university but I can't remember his name and I wondered if you could?"

Yes, I could - because I tutored him at university. We looked him up on line, found a contact for him - which the other student wanted. This morning there was an email from both of them. One to thank me for helping him find his contact and the other simply to say "hello".

There were two doctorates arising out of that school (one in mathematics and the other in psychology). There are at least five other university graduates and others with other qualifications. Many of the students went on to paid employment of one sort or another. One of them worked in a library for many years. I went to her retirement party - and the place was crowded because so many of the students at the university library she worked in liked her enough to want to say "goodbye an good luck". Another went off to Europe, stayed with extended family for a bit and then travelled alone through at least eleven countries even though he uses crutches and speaks nothing but English and a little of the language of his immigrant parents.

There are other students I could talk about. All but a few have done well. But the school still got closed. It was considered that children were better off "mainstreamed". The former students do not agree. Some of them went off to mainstream secondary schools but all of them say they were better prepared because of their first school. It gave them on site physiotherapy, speech therapy, and more. There were very small classes where teachers understood that they might learn in ways that were rather different and that they needed to do it at their own pace.

Those who cannot live alone are reliant on family and friends to help. Many of them are reaching an age where some sort of residential care is becoming necessary. They, rightly, resent the need to consider the "group houses" in the community where they might need to live with people who have other needs which make them less compatible companions.

"We need a place for us," my contact from yesterday told me. 

He's right...likeness can attract and one size does not fit all.