Disowned and Disabled BBC 4 9pm

Posted by celticman on Wed, 30 Oct 2013

Nowhere Else to Go. This is the first of a two part documentary about Britain’s lack of care for poor and disabled children and focusses on the decades following The Second World War. I told my girlfriend’s son, who works in a suitably remote area with children such as these, to watch this programme. It is a distillation of thousands of textbooks of containment and control in an easy to view format. Erving Goffman’s characteristics of a total institution are always a useful checklist. The idea of containment always figures highest. Illegitimate babies can be given to nice middle-class couples. Working-class kids can be given an adult bucket and spade, a pair of leather shorts and sent to Australia and Canada to work for their welfare. For those left in poor old Blighty it was a smorgasbord of experimental approaches to disruptive children’s behaviour. ‘Pin down’ and off-screen giving isolated children who created the most fuss a good kicking worked in the immediate short-term. It was no surprise when one former resident of Hertshill Road Children’s Home described going to prison as an adult as, in a way, ‘going home’.  Teresa describes the shock of entering Kendal House Residential Home in 1973 when she was fourteen.  The preferred method of control in that institution was the Largactil and Valium which, according to her records, she received on 1248 occasions.  This is a Darwinian world in which children are not allowed to get above themselves. Another feature of total institutions is that they are run not for the residents, but for the staff.  They also work to justify themselves through ideology. Institutionalisation is not just a word. As we grow older it is  more likely to be our future, cared for by carers that don’t care, those on the razor’s edge of the minimum wage. I’m sure it will be a profitable experience. Many of those lessons learned in child care are routinely applied in other caring professions.  

Comments

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

I have worked at the more basic end of the social care scene myself (as well as having been a recipient of it). Getting rid of the word 'resident' would be a start.

Res-id-ent     3 syllables - means a nobody who is accomodated in a social care project

Pers-on  - who- lives- here        2 extra syllables. Words cost nothing and can shift attiudes.         Elsie

Submitted by Sooz006 on

Interesting stuff Celt, pin-down, gateing and cellaring ... all words I'd be happy to forget if I could.  Nice bit of writing. 

 

Submitted by celticman on

yes elsie words matter, residents matter and people matter, but what matters most of all is money. Money talks.

Sooz, well nothing new for you here, but second part tonight 9pm

 

Submitted by Sooz006 on

I haven't got a telly, love. 

 

Submitted by Ray Schaufeld on

Yes, money matters. It will likely hit me in the pocket if the government cuts my Disability Living Allowance and my working Credit for doing 16 hours a week paid work, although I may be able to still 'get away with' doing my voluntary work unpenalised. I have now watched part 2. Its all about some very strong and motivated individuals, often with a sharp sense of humour, telling the story of their fight for basic human rights, for example the right of a mature adult in a care home to choose their own bedtime and not always be put to bed by the staff at 10.30 each night, and their awareness(as Ann in the documentary says)  that none of it is their personal fault.  'Rights not Charity.'

Reform took time. The first Children Act of Parliament to reform the welfare of 'looked after children' was in1948, but nothing changed for children with disabilities until the 70s.

If you have yet to read it I recommend Down all the Days by Christy Brown.The first person autobiography of a young man with extremely severe cerebral palsy whose impoverished parents in Dublin refused to give him up to an institution and of the absolute mayhem that was his family life. I read it in 1973 when it first came out. Pure dynamite.            Elsie

Submitted by VeraClark on

Watched with interest. Human rights and cash don't go together, do they? I've avoided all social services programmes since leaving frontline social work because I reach a boiling point of fury. I've yet to see a programme to convey the impossible complexity of it all. Holistic care planning for looked after children is like trying to knit with water. The futility of looked after and child protection systems genuinely keeps me awake at night. Historically, it was a mess. The system is fundamentally flawed. Currently, it's a mess. A dangerous carnage. The cost difference between local authority and private sector foster carers / residential homes makes me sick. Children's needs are glossed over as long as they've got a bed space and deficits are sat on until crisis point.

 

Submitted by celticman on

I've certainly read some of the Christy Brown story, but it's conflated with the film version in my mind and my brain is mush so I'll have another look. Thanks elsie.

Well, you've reached boiling point Vera. Don't want to say anyting that tips you over the edge! Thanks for reading.

 

Submitted by VeraClark on

frown  

 

Submitted by Steve on

I don't think it's just the poor who face such problems. Society in America is increasingly becoming more and more politically correct, that is, safe. Anyone who endangers the sense of the Norm in society or questions the absurd contradictions in society could be locked up, medicated, and simply institutionalized. I was once institutionalized myself because I was scapegoated for the drinking problem of teenagers in Charlotte, NC. It's kind of absurd and really ridiculous. I got letters saying I did not belong in America and that they were totally ashamed of people like me and yet, many of the teenagers in my school drank far more than I did. A student threw my bookbag into the trash can and I got strange phonecalls and then they want to institutionalize you. What do you do with the anger though? It kills you and it's so hard to deal with. The government and society wants to act like they're so humanitarian but they are not. It's not just about the money. It's about shutting up the people who are suffering and going through hardships. It's about sidelining the truth. Here in America, I hear people saying that the poor do nothing. This is from people who play Golf on Tuesday. I mean, it's such sheer stupidity, blaming the poor for all our problems.

 

Submitted by Steve on

What's sick is the redistribution of wealth from the poor to the rich that was attempted with the subprime loans. Of course, the poor and rich lost. The rich are buying up more and more property near the area of the poor and then raising the prices so the poor cannot afford it.  Whatever government gives to the poor, the rich take. And then to blame the poor. This is sheer hypocrisy. I don't know how these people eat their dinners and love their children and talk about ending global poverty. They all act like the Industrial Age is over, that goods and services is not what the US will be selling in the future, but information. But Information Age is really a huge invasion of privacy. You trade privacy for free goods. Makes you feel like a naive prostitute.