RIP Ruth Shelton (d. 2010)

Thanks to Marty Omoto's CDCAN Report for sharing the text of Ruth Shelton's testimony at a 2002 State Assembly hearing in Sacramento. Shelton, an active member of Capitol People First Sacramento, died Friday morning, at home. I won't try to tell her story, because she told her own story:

CLOSE THE DOORS
Testimony given April 30, 2002 to the Assembly Human Services Committee informational hearing on Olmstead Decision Compliance, State Capitol in Room 4202

I have come a long way.
When I was ten years old my parents put me in Sonoma State Hospital.
They had four little kids and another on the way.
This was during the depression.
I lived at Sonoma Developmental Center for over 45 years.
I was asked to live with a foster family in San Francisco.
The Foster Mom died of a drug overdose.
I moved into a Skilled Nursing Facility in Sacramento
because there was no other place to go.
I lived there for 5 years.
It was certainly not much of a life.
I had no choices about anything.
I was told when to eat. What to eat.
Where to go and when to go there.
They did not know I was an artist.
They did not know that I could sing.
They did not know that I had the right to vote.
But I showed them.

I think people should have respect for one another.
Just because we look different or talk different
doesn't mean we don't understand what is going on.
We are of worth.
We have good minds and good ideas.
Let us have a voice in the decisions which effect us.
I now live with my best friend Laura Lee.
We live and work together as a team.
I use In Home Support Services.
Alta Regional Center pays for my transportation.
And they pay for me to attend the Short Center North
where I am an artist, performer, and teacher.
As a member of Capitol People 1st,
I know a lot of people who need services to live in the community.
We need homes we can afford.
We need Supported Living services & choices in providers.
Each person's support needs are different.
Today there are a lot more choices than when I was a child.
But even with all of the choices that we have now.
Why do we still need institutions?
Why do we still have state hospitals
when they deny people their freedom?
I have a voice!
I have a mind!.
I have a choice!
I am of worth!
I am important!.
I am a child of God!
Close the State Hospital!
And open the doors to community living.
Thank you.

Children, Disability and Community Care, 1850-Present

I should add a label for posts: "lectures and conferences I wish I could attend." This would be another one (edited from an announcement on H-Education):

CHILDREN, DISABILITY, and COMMUNITY CARE FROM 1850 to the PRESENT DAY
24-25 October 2007, Sketty Hall, Swansea
A multi-disciplinary conference sponsored by the Society for the Social History of Medicine

Community care has become an increasingly important topic for social policy and historical research. While recent work has stressed the diversity of experience, the variety of different groups involved, the long antecedents of the policy and its contested meanings, there is arguably still too much emphasis on the closure of long-stay mental health and learning disability facilities. This conference seeks to:

• Locate services for children within debates about institutional and community care (framed by the adult experience) over a much longer time-frame.
  
• Extend analysis to a range of physical and sensory disabilities alongside, and in comparison to, provision for children with mental health problems and/or learning difficulties.
  
• Contrast evolving institutional and community-based services for children with disabilities with statutory and voluntary sector provision for children in care because of family breakdown and/or childhood delinquency.
• Re-examine and integrate the now extensive literature on infanticide, child abuse and "mercy" killings, in relation to childhood disability issues.
• Evaluate midwifery and obstetric services, including the development of pre-natal screening and special care for premature babies.
• Assess the role the medical profession played in the diagnosis of childhood disability and the control of specialist services. Here special attention will be paid to the relationship between knowledge and practice.
• Develop an understanding of the relationship between knowledge and practice for nurses, physiotherapists, occupational therapists and speech therapists.
• Emphasise the role community-based services play in leading people into, as well as out of, residential care.
• Draw together ideas about children in need to link efforts to maximise the opportunities available to children disadvantaged by poverty and/or disability, through an evaluation of the SureStart scheme.
• Acknowledge the contribution of the voluntary sector and self-help initiatives.
• Involve researchers and practitioners from a range of disciplines.
• Develop an international dimension to this research by inviting participants from abroad.
• Develop opportunities for the publication of selected conference papers.

All inquiries about the conference should be addressed to Pamela Dale at the Center for Medical History.

Dixie Henrikson, RIP

And speaking of older women.... obituaries like this are turning up a lot lately. This brief notice is from the LA Times today (9 April, p. B15):

Dixie Henrikson, 84; Co-Founder of Agency for Retarded Children
Dixie Henrikson, 84, who co-founded the nonprofit agency Activities for Retarded Children, died of lung cancer Tuesday at her home in Valley Village, said her son, Michael. In 1969, Henrikson became frustrated about the lack of activities available for her developmentally disabled daughter, and with another mother formed an organization to address the problem. Henrikson became executive director and Mary Schallert the associate director of the center, which the women formally incorporated in 1975. Together they organized field trips, athletic competitions and dances for children and adults in North Hollywood, and provided a place where the members could socialize. "A lot of people think Easter and Christmas parties are enough for these kids, and that two functions a year is plenty. But these kids have the same needs as any teenagers, and other teenagers don't say, 'Oh, I've been out this month, so I think I'll stay home now,'" Henrikson told The Times in 1986. Henrikson also conducted the group's English Hand Bell Choir, which performed at United Way functions and holiday celebrations in Los Angeles over the years, including Christmas Eve at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

The generation of parents who had developmentally disabled children after WWII, but before the IDEA, included mothers and fathers who worked hard to create programs and opportunities for their kids. Some of those parents were founders of the ARC and other national organizations; some, like Henrikson, got together with another mother and made something local like their North Hollywood project (complete with bell choir). Someone should be catching these folks for oral histories before they're gone--their work was important, and their stories deserve recording.

For further reading:

Barbara Bair, "The Parents' Council and Social Change in Rhode Island, 1951-1970," Rhode Island History 40(November 1981): 144-159.

Katherine Castles, "'Nice, Average Americans': Postwar Parents' Groups and the Defense of the Normal Family," in Steven Noll and James W. Trent Jr., eds., Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader (NYU Press 2004).

Kathleen W. Jones, "Education for Children with Mental Retardation: Parent Activism, Public Policy, and Family Ideology in the 1950s," in Steven Noll and James W. Trent Jr., eds., Mental Retardation in America: A Historical Reader (NYU Press 2004).