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| Rye helps close disability homes |
| By Jessica Lam |
Published
04/8/2009
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Print , Ryersonian Print Edition , News , Campus news
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Rye helps close disability homes
For years, Ryerson’s school of disability studies has fought to prove that institutionalizing those with intellectual disabilities is wrong.
By speaking at conferences, contributing research, and teaching students about social inclusion, the program’s faculty members have been activists in urging the government to close these institutions.
Finally, the school’s hard work has come to fruition, while demonstrating that universities can influence government policy.
On March 31, Ontario closed its last three government-operated institutions built to house the intellectually disabled, marking a victory for the community-living movement.
“The closure is a really significant statement about human dignity, human rights and people with disabilities,” said Melanie Panitch, co-director of Ryerson’s school of disability studies.
“All of the faculty here have got long and deep roots in the disability movement. So I think we come at it with our own experiences, our teaching and what our students bring to the school.”
Since Ryerson’s school of disability studies opened in 1999, it has been a leading voice of the community-living movement by lobbying the government to come up with alternatives to institutionalization.
Last week, the school and Community Living Ontario commemorated the closing of these institutions by organizing a film screening of The Freedom Tour, a documentary about those who lived in these facilities, and a candlelight vigil outside Queen’s Park.
“What can you say except never again – never again will our people be warehoused, never again abandoned, never again humiliated on such a massive scale,” said Catherine Frazee, co-director of Ryerson’s school of disability studies, at a speech during the event.
Frazee has a lifelong disability, which restricts her to a wheelchair. Although she requires full-time support, she said she is lucky that her family never admitted her to a facility for the disabled.
Ontario opened its first institution, the Huronia Regional Centre, in 1876, to house people with developmental disabilities. Parents with intellectually disabled children were only able to receive government support if they placed their sons and daughters in these institutions.
But they were often dirty, overcrowded and short-staffed.
“Imagine being a two-year-old and being separated from your family,” said Panitch. “There was very little in the way of education. There was very little in the way of stimulation . . . Many of them were built to house 2,000 people.”
There was also rampant abuse at the facilities and families were told to restrain from visiting in order to avoid “interrupting with their program,” said Panitch.
According to Frazee, the institutions were based on a notion that disabled people need to be removed from everyday society in order to receive care. “That is an inherently destructive myth because we know that when people are hidden away, bad things happen to them.”
In 1987, the Ontario government recognized that people with developmental disabilities didn’t need to be secluded and made a commitment to close all of its facilities.
But Panitch said that the quest to close these institutions didn’t start with the government’s policy change. “Really, it started with mothers in the 1950s, sitting around kitchen tables, protesting and resisting the only option available to them.”
Keith Powell, the executive director of Community Living Ontario, said that the movement has been years in the making. “In this last phase, it involved articulating the vision and the values, highlighting research that showed that the quality of life is better for people living in the community than living in the institution.”
Panitch said she recognizes that a lot of work still needs to be done to ensure that disabled people are not isolated within society, and that they receive adequate support and resources while living in the community.
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