Transcript Linking Lives & Times: Understanding Social Change via

Linking Lives & Times:
Connecting Biography, Disability
& History
Sonali Shah & Mark Priestley
Centre for Disability Studies
E-mail: [email protected]
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Themes
• Project Overview
• Key Questions
• Theoretical Framework
• Case Studies
– Family Life; Education
• Concepts & Conclusions
• Has Life Changed for Disabled People in
Post War Britain?
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Project Overview
• Part of 3 year Nuffield Foundation
fellowship
• Life story interviews with 50 physically
disabled people, living in England, born in
the 1940s, the 1960s, and the 1980s.
• Explore actual change in disabling
societies via empirical life histories from
different generations.
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Key research questions
• Has life changed for disabled people since
WWII?
• What are the resources that make a
difference in disabled people’s lives? Have
they changed over time?
• To what extent has social policy made a
difference to the experiences of disabled
people?
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Theme: Education & family life
• How has segregated educational provision
affected disabled children’s family lives and
relationships since the 1940s?
– Make links between public and private/ macro
and micro
– Connecting policy analysis with qualitative life
history data
– Interplay between personal agency and social
structure
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Some public policies
• Family:
– Increasing support for families of disabled
children (Whizz Kidz; Aiming high)
– 1993 Standard Rules on the
Equalization of Opportunities for Persons with
Disabilities
– United Nations Convention on the Rights of
Persons with Disabilities 2008
• Education
– Warnock Report 1978; Education Act 1981;
SENDA 2001; DDA 2005
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Method & Sample
• Generation 1: born post-war and
completed secondary education before
1970
• Generation 2: started school before 1970
and completed secondary education after
1981 Act
• Generation 3: started school after 1981
Act and completed secondary education
after DDA
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• Experiences of Mainstream
I mean, obviously my disability was noticeable, so
you’d get kids calling you names, you know, but
once they realised that, you know, that you
would join in football and everything else, like
anybody else, I think nobody then bothered at
all. (Dan, 1940/50s)
‘It [bulling] wasn’t constant, it wasn’t really
malicious either. It was just somebody needed a
target and I was the easiest one, so, I don’t
know. It was, it was traumatic at the time’
(Steve, 1980/ 90.)
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Level of Choice
it was suggested by the medical profession that I should go
to a special school…and people like doctors and that
were very, in a very authoritative position, people
thought that they knew best. (Dan, 1940s)
I think me mum looked at specialist, because she didn’t
realise mainstream was an option… it was practically
unheard of then I suppose to have disabled kids in
mainstream school… she [mum] spoke to a few other
parents of children around my age who were looking at
the possibility of sending their kids to mainstream school
(Steve, 1980s)
my mother started to fight the entrenched values of the
education system to enable me to go into mainstream
education (Harvey, 1980s)
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• In hospital away from family
[THEN – 1940s]
I remember going up to London, because I was in Hospital
in London, we lived in Kent at the time, quite a long way
from the major London hospitals. I don’t know why my
parents wanted me to go to a London Hospital but I can
only think that maybe the regional ones weren’t yet
NHS…I was four years old I think and I didn’t
understand anything that was happening… [my parents]
just kind of left me there and it was just absolutely
devastating to be left in this huge hospital with these
strangers…I think my parents came every other
weekend ‘cos they didn’t have a car or anything like that
to start off with, so they came up on the steam train.…
[NOW – 21st Century]
Now parents are able to go into hospital, or at least one of the
parents is able to go into hospital with them, and stay with
them. So there’s a constant continuity of parental support.
And nowadays people would be very supportive of the child,
but in those days they weren’t at all.
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• In School away from family
The education of disabled children going up to the 1960s
was actually controlled by the health service and not by
education, so they had quite a large say in where
disabled children went, and they felt it was best to send
me away to a special school, for my mum and for me
(Bob, 1950s)
I got left at this school when I was four years old… I was
crying my eyes out ‘cos my mum and dad had left me…
(Tan, 1960s)
I was a Monday to Friday boarder because the orthopaedic
surgeon at the time wasn’t thrilled with the thought of
me travelling from here to there twice a day…(Ian,
1960s)
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• Impact of childhood separation on family
I mean my sister never wanted to play with me, if she
did play with me, if one of her friends called I would
be dropped like a ton of brick…There was always
that kind of rivalry there…I found her very rejecting
(Daisy, 1940s)
I never really kind of saw my parents as my parents
‘cos I didn’t know who they were. Do you know
what I mean? They were just people who used to
come and see me (Tan, 1960s)
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• Separation from local peers:
…with mainstream schools you’re within a catchment area
and so you live near your friends. The school I went to,
because it was special needs school, it really wasn’t like
that. People came from all over the place…when I got
home I was at home and there was nothing for me
outside of home. (Holly, 1980s)
…my sisters went to infant and junior school at local
schools, they knew a lot of local people as a result. With
me, because I went to this school which was a little
distance away I missed out on that sort of thing a lot.
That’s why I’m a firm believer that schools shouldn’t be
segregated…(Ant, 1960s)
I didn’t know anyone, I had no local friends … I didn’t
really want to go home because what was there? (Bob,
1950s)
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• Turning Points: Agency vs structure
[the secondary school], which is two three miles away, has
stairs. The school wanted me to go to a special school.
And my mum put her foot down and said ‘no way, she
will go to the school’. Cos we had stairs, and even with
one calliper I could get up and down the stairs and erm,
so I went to the ordinary school… (Maggie, 1940s)
I was very, very lucky because the only reason I left my
special school was that the teacher who had been
assigned to my class and had the most to do with me
throughout my time at my special school, saw that I had
the potential and the ability to survive in a mainstream
environment. So she took her free periods off when she
wasn’t teaching. She took me to the local primary school
and made sure that I did maths and science along with
kids at the local primary school. But she fought against
the rest of the school and to some extent the apathy of
my parents to get me out of the school. (Helen, 1980s)
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Theoretical Framework
• Personal biographies are windows to social,
cultural and policy change in Britain (C Wright
Mills, Sociological Imagination)
• Connect structure/ agency, individual/ social
• a social model approach - disabled people are
•
not the subject matter of disability studies
(Finkelstein 2001)
critical realism – disability is real (social
relations, institutions and barriers)
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Barriers
Life
Disability
Our Research
Relationships
Institutions
‘Empirical’
‘Actual’
‘Real’
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Temporal realities – change over
time
• Policies & institutions come & go (1944
Education Act)
• Disabling barriers created & removed
(designated employment/ sheltered
workshops)
• Relationships transform
• Narrative accounts of disabling barriers
are temporally situated  changing
societies
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Generatio Born in 1940s/
n 1
grew up 1950s
Total = 12 (now ages 58(M: 1; F: 11) 67)
Generatio Born in 1960s/
grew up 1970s
n 2
Total = 20 (now ages 38(M: 5; F: 15 47)
Generatio Born in 1980s/
n 3
grew up 1990s
Total = 11 (now ages 18(M: 4; F: 7) 27)
1942: Beverage Report
1943: Second World War
1944 Education Act
1946 National Health Service Act
1948 National Assistance Act
1950s: Steel lightweight wheelchairs
1962: Declaration for the Rights of
Disabled Persons
1970: Local Authority Social Services
Act
1970 Chronically Sick and Disabled
Persons Act
1976: Disabled People’s Movement
1978: Warnock Report
1978/9: Independent Living
1981: International year of disabled
people
1981 Education Act
1990: Community Care Act
1995/ 2005: DDA
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Concept of Time
• Chronological time - e.g. a law changed in 1995
•
•
or the economy changed in 1973
Biographical time - e.g. things that happened in
childhood, adulthood, (“when I was 18”)
Generational and historical time - important to
remember that life has been 'different' for
different generations of young disabled people.
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Some conclusions in our research
• real disabling barriers can only be
understood and observed through disabled
people’s empirical realities
• experiences of disability do differ and
impacts the life course at different points in
time
• institutions, environmental barriers, and
human relationships are important factors
that shape people's lives or careers
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Has life changed for disabled
people in post-war Britain?
Thoughts & Questions
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