The 1950s – Family or Institution
In the 1950s, there were two major alternatives – living at home with family or going to an institution. Families received little if any support from public agencies. Until 1954, for instance, no state health department offered any special services for children with developmental disabilities or their families.
Public welfare services were directed largely to long-term institutional care – orphanages, mental hospitals, public and private institutions for people with developmental disabilities, and nursing homes.
Brown v Board of Education addressed the issue of racial segregation in the schools, but opened the door for the recognition of the right to a free public education. Local parent groups started nursery and day care programs and sheltered workshops.
The emergence of the parent movement in the late 1940s and early 1950s meant that more support was available to families, though in an indirect way.
Photo courtesy Mary Ellen Mark
from Ward 81 by Karen Folger Jacobs)
The horrors of Willowbrook consumed nearly three decades. Geraldo Rivera's investigation led to the class action lawsuit that revealed what really transpired inside this institution.
This is not to say that families were supported adequately. It is only to say that "community services" began to emerge that allowed more families to stay together.
There were few places for their sons and daughters to go during the day. In the 1950s the number of children with developmental disabilities enrolled in special educational classes doubled from the 1940s, and the number of school systems offering such services increased fourfold.
Photo courtesy Caswell Center Archives
Rehabilitation programs for adults were increasingly available in the community.
The major approach to family support in the 1950s was parent counseling. According to the President's Panel on Mental Retardation in 1962, "Parent counseling is now being provided by private physicians, clinic staffs, social workers, nurses, psychologists, and school personnel. Although this service is still in an experimental stage of development, it offers bright prospects for helping parents to meet their social and emotional problems."
The major alternative to life in the family, however, was not in the community. In 1940, approximately 100,000 people lived in institutions.
By 1962, the President's Panel on Mental Retardation reported that approximately 200,000 children and adults lived in residential institutions, mostly at public expense.
Photo courtesy William Bronston, M.D.
Ray Stewart of WOI-TV Ames, Iowa, along with Iowa State University, produced "In Our Care," a 13 week series of documentaries filmed inside Iowa's state institutions. The series won the 1952 National Sylvania Television Award for Production Excellence. Eight films, about 30 minutes each, were selected for posting.
Cerebral Palsy
Cherokee and Mt. Pleasant
Clarinda and Independence
Glenwood State Hospital and School
Polio
Thursday's Child
Woodward State Hospital and School
Some of those institutions operated programs to assist people to leave the institution. Family care situations were established whereby state institutions paid for the room, board and supervision of small groups of former residents.
Group residences were also established in the community. For instance, Vineland State School in New Jersey operated a group residence in Red Bank.
A group of young women worked in the community and lived at the residence. Eventually, Vineland closed the home down because, as Bernie White noted, "there weren't any more mildly retarded residents to send to the facility."
