John Rynders (Part 1)
Professor, University of Minnesota, describing the innovative Project EDGE on Down Syndrome he directed
University Experts Visit Cambridge
(Run time 1:15)
We had been doing research projects up at Cambridge, so Cambridge wasn't an unfamiliar place for us. And because I had come out of an institution background professionally myself, institutions were familiar environments.
Anyway, we also, I had also, as well as others, had learned that institutions also did things that were not very good for the development of people.
And so we spent several days visiting various parts of the institution, writing reports, trying to get a cross-section of what life was like from the time that residents would arise in the morning until they went to bed, usually in late afternoon, and then obviously went to court and served as expert witnesses in the case.
And fortunately that one turned out to be one of the seminal cases in starting the deinstitutionalization movement.