Positive predictions

[purplepidjrobin]

I work with adults with learning difficulties somewhat like those of the DCs I've read about on here. I can't get too specific, but most of them have had a bare minimum of care for their entire lives. Many have been locked away in mental institutions. They have had no OT, SALT, or even meaningful activity. One person, who is perfectly capable of letting me know what she wants to wear, when she needs to be changed, whether or not she needs my help etc was, up until about 4 years ago, judged to have no communication . Others have been left to fend for themselves in the community and suffered atrocious bullying and abuse at the hands of NT peers.

It gives me hope to read of all your fights in these pages. Not because you have to fight, and it's really bloody hard work for you, but because this will not happen in the future. The input you are putting in means that there will be far fewer people as severly impaired as the wonderful guys and gals I work with.

Just thought you might like my humble opinion

This is a facinating thread, I can see lots of different sides, I think things will be different... and I believe that expectations are so much higher than they were,

but I also know how easy it is to give 'lip service' to the legislation and to engage in what can only be described as 'covering your own arse' so the boxes are ticked and yet it is not real choice...

However I am a professional social care worker too, and I am not unique, so if people like pidgrobin and me and lots of the others who also work in the field can make a different, then it will be different...

Also there is a growth in user led organisations which hold workers and organisations to account,

It is a very very gradual movement towards better understanding and tolerance. Comparing the place I work now with how I've heard it was 5 years ago, it is light years ahead of the institution it was then - and still has a very long way to go before it does what we want it to.

It is also closely linked with, as you say, developments like PECS and Makaton/Signalong - but these depend on the willingness of the rest of us to learn to communicate that way. I've given a colleague who has been there much longer than me a crash course in the basics of makaton (he asked me btw, I didn't force him!)

Also, the massive strides in medicine have lead to more help for people from that quarter. Where once things like epilepsy and polio were fatal or severely disabling, now they are curable and/or managable with drugs and lifestyle. ADHD is headed that way with advances in the methylphenidate family. I don't agree with drugging people up for a quiet life, but the kids I've worked with dx with ADHD just can't help it, even when they know it's "wrong". If drugs can help them regain that control, it has to be a good thing imo.

Thank you for the note of optimism.