The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities
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Providing information, education, and training to build knowledge, develop skills, and change attitudes that will lead to increased independence, productivity, self determination, integration and inclusion (IPSII) for people with developmental disabilities and their families.

Bengt Nirje on Normalization

Produced in 1993 by David Goode / The Minnesota Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities

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Principle of Normalization and Development

Bengt Nirje: The principle, as it says in the beginning, when you make available to all persons with disabilities, patterns of life and conditions of everyday living. Which are as close as possible to the same as the regular circumstances and ways of life in their communities. And then I just had to define normal. And normalization has to do with normal conditions of life and to define them as the normal rhythm of the day, the normal rhythm of the week, the normal rhythm of the year and changing of the seasons. The normal developmental steps in the life cycle. Those are the four aspects that came with time, with the growth and with development of human beings. And then I added a normal [Inaudible] the normal sections, patterns, the normal economic patterns and rights of the society, and the normal developmental patterns and standards in their communities.

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The GCDD is funded under the provisions of P.L. 106-402. The federal law also provides funding to the Minnesota Disability Law Center, the state Protection and Advocacy System, and to the Institute on Community Integration, the state University Center for Excellence. The Minnesota network of programs works to increase the IPSII of people with developmental disabilities and families into community life.

This project was supported, in part by grant number 2401MNSCDD, from the U.S. Administration for Community Living, Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, D.C. 20201. Grantees undertaking projects with government sponsorship are encouraged to express freely their findings and conclusions. Points of view or opinions do not, therefore, necessarily represent official ACL policy.

This website is supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $1,152,808.00 funded by ACL/HHS and $222,000.00 funded by non-federal-government source(s). The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS, or the U.S. Government.