Bengt Nirje on Normalization

Bengt Nirje: Respite care in the home, respite care outside the home, appropriate respite care… they should have programs for those about 20 years after school [Inaudible]. Then, for children who cannot live at home, living in a family home or apartment with special services, support services for the days of the week or when they need it, when they can't live at home. And apartment for special services for adults who need assistance [Inaudible]. And then daily activities for persons who have no jobs. These are all rights and the communities have to provide them, or counties have to provide them. And institutions are out of law, institutions being defined as anywhere where there are more than four persons under the same roof. Yes, it could be five or six under special circumstances, but that would be the exception.

We have since last year [Inaudible] in any Swedish institutions, and we still have about roughly 3000 in institutions, but they have to disappear before year 2000. [Inaudible] and this going down very, very quickly. We will have only 800 by '98, 1998. And we don't have the same institutions as US. We have two or three that are over a hundred persons, over hundred persons. The majority of places were 20, or 30, or 40, and they are spread over our long country. So we never had [Inaudible] you know, like chain houses and that kind of thing. It was not, we should say, private living.