Time of paradoxes: what the twentieth century was like for people with intellectual disabilities living in Czechoslovakia/Czech Republic

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-66
Author(s):  
Monika Mužáková ◽  
Iva Strnadová
Keyword(s):  
Czech Republic ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Students With Disabilities ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Compulsory Education ◽  
Special Schools ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Education Act ◽  
Czech Lands

This chapter explores life in Czechoslovakia (later Czech Republic) in the 20th Century for people with intellectual disabilities. It opens at the time that the Czech lands were part of the Austrian-Hungarian Empire. This was a period marked by efforts to increase the quality of institutional care for people with intellectual disabilities. The authors then describe the period of communism. They discuss the controversial nature of an Education Act (1948), which contained a well-established network of special schools for students with disabilities as a regular part of the school system, and yet it introduced the concept of “being uneducable” for students with severe and profound intellectual disabilities. The authors also debate the role of a parental movement in advocacy for the rights of people with intellectual disabilities. The chapter concludes with the period after the fall of communism, when compulsory education was introduced for all children with no exception.

Huronia's Double Bind: How Institutionalisation Bears Out on the Body

Somatechnics ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-111
Author(s):  
Jen Rinaldi ◽  
Kate Rossiter
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Lived Experiences ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
The Body ◽  
Interview Data ◽  
Double Bind ◽  
Total Institution ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Gendered Bodies ◽  
The Impact

Frequently missing from histories of forced institutionalisation are close readings of the enduring impact on survivors' corporeality. In this article the authors analyse interview data featuring people who survived the Huronia Regional Centre: a total institution designed to warehouse people with intellectual disabilities that operated in Canada from 1876 to 2009. These interviews reveal the impact of institutional technologies on the bodies of the institutionalised, and how institutional survivors resisted those technologies. Institutional rituals meant to organise and cleanse residents, resulted in the reification of institutional subjects as inescapably contaminated. Drawing from Mary Douglas's theory of dirt and Julia Kristeva's interpretation of dirt as abjection, the authors engage with interview data on daily institutional care routines, particularly dressing, eating, showering, and the administration of medication, to show how these rituals produced for the institutionalised subject meanings around gender and disability as markers of defilement. The authors argue that the kinds of deeply oppressive and often violent rituals central to lived experiences of institutionalisation are grounded in the assumption that disabled gendered bodies are already-abject, hence the institutional demand for the institutionalised to be brought under control.

scholarly journals Explicit and implicit attitudes towards people with intellectual disabilities: The role of contact and participant demographics

2017 ◽  
Vol 31 (5) ◽  
pp. 778-784 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aidan J. Murch ◽  
Tanveen Choudhury ◽  
Michelle Wilson ◽  
Eleanor Collerton ◽  
Maya Patel ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Implicit Attitudes ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities

Holding the Future

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Freitag
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Personal Narrative ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Group Homes ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Aging Parents ◽  
Adults With Disabilities ◽  
The Future ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities

Long wait lists for services and a dearth of people willing to work as caregivers ensure that many people, particularly with intellectual disabilities, continue to live with their aging parents. Informed by a personal narrative of a successful future for a person with intellectual disabilities, this chapter proposes three components that are essential for success. Adults with disabilities can benefit from establishing a life outside their parents’ home. They also need place to work and inclusion in the community. The communities created by L’Arche and the Brothers of Charity, where caregivers live and work together with people with intellectual disabilities, provide one model for care. The extent of current need makes it impossible to provide this for everyone, but some of the lessons learned from “living with” people with disabilities can perhaps be carried over into existing group homes or even institutional care settings.

Identifying the invisible: The experiences of prostitution among persons with intellectual disabilities: Implications for social work

2011 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-140 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jari Kuosmanen ◽  
Mikaela Starke
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Research Area ◽  
Complex Problem ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Special Schools ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Group Interviews

• Summary: This article explores a relatively uncharted research area. The focus of the analysis is on how professionals working in care provision units, specialized prostitution units, the police, social services and special schools detect and deal with prostitution among people with intellectual disabilities. The data were obtained primarily through focus group interviews. The study shows that organizational specialization in different authorities and services makes it difficult to identify and work with this group. Clients with complex problems tend to find themselves in between the jurisdictional fields of different authorities, meaning that many do not receive the support that they need. • Findings: In recent decades social work has undergone increasing balkanization and specialization. Each particular organization is regulated by specific legislation, regulations, forms of knowledge and normative assumptions. Professionals working with people with intellectual disabilities have difficulties in detecting prostitution among their clients, whilst those who work with prostitution lack the knowledge and methods to work with intellectual disabilities. At the same time, social work with these individuals is conducted within a field of tension between the client′s right of self-determination and professionals’ responsibilities for their well-being. • Applications: The study demonstrates that, with this type of complex problem, it is important to establish different types of collaboration between different organizations. However, due to the risk of increased control being detrimental to clients, collaboration needs to be founded on the client’s needs and right to self-determination.

Seksualność osób z niepełnosprawnością intelektualną w opinii nauczycieli i terapeutów

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (36) ◽  
pp. 59-74
Author(s):  
Marta Rawińska ◽  
Artur Teroiłowski
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Special Needs ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
Specific Model ◽  
Institutional Framework ◽  
Special Schools ◽  
Personal Standards ◽  
Knowledge And Beliefs ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Older Teachers

The aim of the study was to investigate teachers’ and therapists’ attitudes towards the sexuality of people with intellectual disabilities. Teachers working with people with intellectual disabilities in special schools and residential special needs schools act within the institutional framework – according to a specific model of support based on official regulations as well as their personal standards and values. Their knowledge and beliefs determine to a large extent whether the environment of people with disabilities will have a supportive or repressive and restraining influence on the development and expression of sexuality in people with disabilities. The results of the study indicate that teachers and therapists show acceptance and understanding towards the sexuality of people with intellectual disabilities. They respect their rights in this area. The attitudes towards the sexuality of people with mild intellectual disabilities are more positive than towards the sexuality of people with severe intellectual disabilities. Moreover, older teachers and therapists are more likely to perceive people with intellectual disabilities in more asexual terms and treat them as people without sexual needs or rights.

The role of support staff as people move from congregated settings to group homes and personalized arrangements in Ireland

2016 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 152-164 ◽  
Author(s):  
Edurne García Iriarte ◽  
Janine Stockdale ◽  
Roy McConkey ◽  
Fiona Keogh
Keyword(s):  
Public Policy ◽  
Intellectual Disabilities ◽  
Social Relationships ◽  
Staff Training ◽  
Living Arrangements ◽  
Group Homes ◽  
Support Staff ◽  
Community Group ◽  
People With Intellectual Disabilities

The movement of people with intellectual disabilities into the community is increasingly endorsed by public policy. Whilst staff are critical to a successful transition to the community, there is only scattered research on their role in supporting people to move. In this study, 32 staff and the 16 people with intellectual disabilities they supported to move from congregated settings to group homes or personalized living arrangements in the community were interviewed on two occasions, before (time 1) and after (time 2) the move. In congregated settings, staff steered the move to community living, they helped them to settle in community group homes and supported them to increase control over their lives in personalized community arrangements, where they support became increasingly more personalized and geared towards community participation and development of social relationships. Implications for staff training are drawn.

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