Dorothy Atkinson

Using Autobiographical Approaches with People with Learning Difficulties

Biography and autobiography have been used in numerous ways to represent people with learning difficulties. In this paper we review a variety of approaches to biography and autobiography with people with learning difficulties, and discuss the roles researchers play. The paper ends with a discussion of the potential of autobiography as a means to change the power relationships in disability research.

Research and empowerment: involving people with learning difficulties in oral and life history research

This paper takes as its central theme the argument that inclusive learning disability research has the potential to be empowering for the people who are involved in it. The author draws from two oral and life history research projects to explore the multiple uses of story‐telling and the multi‐layered picture of learning disability history that emerged. People with learning difficulties were involved in all stages of the research process, contributing their stories as oral and life historians but also co‐researching written records in a bid to know and understand more about their own and other peoples past lives. The research enabled participants not only to tell their stories but also to reflect on them, to develop new insights into their meaning and to see them in a wider social and political context.This paper takes as its central theme the argument that inclusive learning disability research has the potential to be empowering for the people who are involved in it. The author draws from two oral and life history research projects to explore the multiple uses of story‐telling and the multi‐layered picture of learning disability history that emerged. People with learning difficulties were involved in all stages of the research process, contributing their stories as oral and life historians but also co‐researching written records in a bid to know and understand more about their own and other peoples past lives. The research enabled participants not only to tell their stories but also to reflect on them, to develop new insights into their meaning and to see them in a wider social and political context.

‘The silence is roaring’: sterilization, reproductive rights and women with intellectual disabilities

This paper reviews the history of sterilization of women with intellectual disabilities, and considers its relevance to current practice regarding reproductive choice and futures. The paper provides an overview of published research on historical practices, focusing on the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada and the Nordic countries. Most of this research draws upon written records, centring on eugenics debates. However, emerging oral history testimonies gathered by the authors suggest that sterilization procedures were also conducted in the community, the result of private negotiations between parents and medical practitioners. The article presents these accounts and calls for an end to a ‘roaring silence’ on this issue. More empirical studies are needed to recover the experiences of women who have been sterilized and to explore how decisions about reproductive choice and capacity were made in the past and continue to be made today.

History from the inside: towards an inclusive history of intellectual disability

This paper reviews the place of the ‘voice’ in the history of intellectual disability, drawing principally on developments in the UK, but also making reference to comparative developments in other countries. Various approaches have been used by research historians to collect and represent the voices of those involved in this history; including biographical reconstruction, oral history, institutional histories and life histories. In response to the challenge, ‘Nothing About Us Without Us’ the slogan of the disabled peoples movement, the paper argues for the careful use of oral and biographical accounts to augment histories told through official sources and examines some of the methodological challenges associated with such approaches. However, the argument of this paper, ultimately, is in favour of what we are calling ‘inclusive history’, where academic historians and oral/life historians contribute to the development of a shared history of intellectual disability.

Written out of History: Invisible Women in Intellectual Disability Social Work

Abstract The field of intellectual disability is an important field of social work practice in both Britain and Australia. Yet this is also a multidisciplinary field in which the role of social workers, particularly women, in contributing to the lives of people with intellectual disability and their families has largely gone unnoticed. Focusing on England and Victoria, Australia in particular, this paper uses oral history interviews with long-standing social workers and documentary evidence including government reports and newspaper coverage to explore the similarity in the roles of social workers in intellectual disability. It covers the period between the beginning of social work in this field, which in the case of Britain was 1929 and in Victoria 1952, until the end of the 1990s. Work with families is identified as being central in both countries, as well as mediating relationship between institutions and services, families, and the community, and service development and advocacy. The paper concludes by asking questions about the disappearance of identified social work positions in this field and how their previous roles are fulfilled.

An Oral History of the Ethics of Institutional Closure

This paper examines the ethical dimensions of the closure process of an English large long-stay institution for people with learning difficulties during the last quarter of the twentieth century. It does this primarily through an analysis of oral historical interview data stemming from those managers who implemented rundown. The paper illustrates the ways in which their testimonies indicate the presence of a morally infused dominant rhetoric, which was based upon the therapeutic benefits of closure, informed by the ideas of normalisation and social role valorisation. However, the paper argues that this principled managerial perspective had unfortunate ethical consequences, in that it under-acknowledged, marginalised and discredited staff viewpoints which raised pertinent issues relating to the downsizing of this particular hospital.

Implementation of Community Care: Case Studies

In this chapter we consider community care in Croydon, an urban authority, and Norfolk, a predominantly rural county. The Croydon case study traces the implementation of community care through the lives and experiences of four women. The Norfolk case study interweaves the main narrative with the stories of six people with learning difficulties. Three themes are traced in both: education, living arrangements, and work/daytime occupation—echoing the themes of Chapter 3. This enables consideration of the impact of community care on how people lived and how they spent their time. There were connections between Croydon and Norfolk, part of the continuing migration of people with learning difficulties which had begun in the early part of the century (Rolph, 1999). Croydon residents were sometimes moved to residential placements in Norfolk and then returned when accommodation became available.