Normalization (people With Disabilities) - Normalization in Contemporary Society

Normalization in Contemporary Society

In the United States, large public institutions housing adults with developmental disabilities began to be phased out as a primary means of delivering services in the early 1970s. Unfortunately, the impetus for this mass deinstitutionalization was typically complaints of systematic abuse of the patients by staff and others responsible for the care and treatment of this traditionally vulnerable population. In many states the process of deinstitutionalization has taken 10–15 years due to a lack of community supports in place to assist individuals in achieving the greatest degree of independence and community integration as possible. A significant obstacle in developing community supports has been ignorance and resistance on the part of "typically developed" community members who have been taught by our culture that "those people" are somehow fundamentally different and flawed and it is in everyone's best interest if they are removed from society (this developing out of 19th Century ideas about health, morality, and contagion). Part of the normalization process has been returning people to the community and supporting them in attaining as "normal" as life as possible, but another part has been broadening the category of "normal" to include all human beings. People with disabilities are not to be viewed as sick, ill, abnormal, subhuman, or unformed, but as people who require significant supports in certain (but not all) areas of their life. With this comes an understanding that all people require supports at certain times or in certain areas of their life, but that most people acquire these supports informally or through socially acceptable avenues. The key issue of support typically comes down to productivity and self-sufficiency, two values that are central to our society's definition of self-worth. If we as a society were able to broaden this concept of self-worth perhaps fewer people would be labeled as "disabled."