Valuing intellectually abnormal people

After many years of neglect, The Government in England has got round to making policy for people with an intellectual disability (usually called ‘learning disability’ in the UK). The main policy statements have the usual vacuous PR names - Valuing People and Valuing People Now, and include high-minded statements of principle combined with a commitment to ‘choice’. This is to be realised by subjecting people with an intellectual disability to lots of assessments, while at the same time relieving them of the burden of having anything to choose between. This is because services such as day centres are being closed (sorry, ‘modernised’), while funding for any kind of communal living is being withheld. After several scandals, the Government has finally conceded that some action may be needed to improve the health of people with an intellectual disability, but is still committed to winding down specialist mental health services for this group.

This is all justified as being ‘inclusive’ - the latest term in a sequence which began with ‘normalisation’, via ‘social role valorisation’ and ‘ordinary living’. However, these principles to date have only been imposed on people at one end of the IQ scale - those who are two standard deviations or more below the mean, equivalent to an IQ score of lower than 70. To avoid discrimination, we should of course apply the same thinking to the other group of intellectually abnormal people: those two standard deviations above the mean, with an IQ of 130 and above.

When we look at the life-styles of this latter group in England today, we can see that these too offend the principle of inclusion. This is particularly true of arrangements for education and daycare. For a long time in the past, the intellectually-abnormal attended segregated special schools (the so-called ‘grammar schools’). The expansion of comprehensive education has of course reduced this segregation, but wealthy people still pay for their intellectually-abnormal children to attend residential special schools at places like Eton and Harrow. It is, however, after secondary school that non-inclusive policies dominate. Most intellectually abnormal at present go to segregated institutions (the so-called ‘universities’). Fortunately, changes in government policy has meant that these institutions have expanded to include a much wider range of students who are not intellectually abnormal. However, universities still have a major role providing sheltered daycare for many people with intellectual abnormalities for the whole of their adult lives. This is often presented as being ‘work’, but you will often find low levels of activity, most of which comprises pointless and unfulfilling activities like teaching and marking.

The situation is hardly better in the residential circumstances of intellectually-abnormal people. Many seek their friends exclusively among other members of this group, and even marry each other. They often live together in communal settings (particularly when they are ‘students’), and tend to congregate in particular areas of towns. The position is far worse in the USA, where there are rumoured to be whole college towns of people with intellectual abnormalities.

What should be done about this? Following the principles of Valuing People etc, we should enable people with intellectual abnormalities to choose the lifestyles of the general population. There is no reason why they can not work in open employment such as shopwork, clerical activities, and manual assembly-work. Indeed, thanks to recent Government economic policies, more and more intellectually-abnormal people are moving into such jobs after they leave university. We should emphasises the importance of intellectually-abnormal people taking part in ordinary community activities (like going to bingo, the pub and the dog track), which will help them develop friendships with ordinary people. In that way, we will move to a society where everyone will increasingly be the same.