- Most nomadic tribes
considered people with disabilities useless because they could
not contribute to the wealth of the tribe. Nomads often
left people with disabilities to die whenever the tribe moved
to a new location.
- Early Christianity
brought a period of sympathy and pity toward people with disabilities.
Churches organized services for people with disabilities within
their congregations and homes. Many Christians held superior
attitudes towards people with disabilities which resulted in a
general loss of autonomy. To many, disability represented
impurity of some kind. This impurity could be purged through
workshop and forgiveness of sins, including the belief that with
enough prayer and rituals, the disability could be eliminated.
- During the Middle
Ages, Christians became fearful of people with disabilities
as their attraction to supernaturalism increased. People
with disabilities were ridiculed, such as a court jester who was
actually someone with a humped back. People with disabilities
were not only ridiculed, but persecuted as well. Disability
became a manifestation of evil.
- The Renaissance
brought the initiation of medical care and treatment for people
with disabilities. The Renaissance is where the so-called
"charity model" and "medical model" began. Education was
available to people with disabilities for the first time in Western
recorded history. An enlightened approach to social norms
and dreams for a better future seemed to encourage active participation
of people with disabilities in their respective communities.
The "charity model" is based upon a benevolent society which provides
services based upon a presumption of "what is best" for those
served.
This is not to say that people with disabilities
were not often institutionalized. The charity model during
the Renaissance promoted institutionalization of doing what was
best for people with disabilities. Periods from the Renaissance
through World War II indicated that society believed people with
disabilities might be educated, but in "special" segregated programs
or schools, often far from urban or heavily populated areas.
- This institutionalization
led to the ultimate abuse during the 1930s in Hitler's Germany.
People with disabilities, most notably those with mental retardation
and mental illness, became the Gestapo's first guinea pigs in
medical experimentation and mass execution. Before Hitler's
SS began mass extermination of Jews, Gays and Lesbians and other
minorities and their supporters, people with disabilities were
all put to death by Hitler's concentration camp staff.
- Early in the formation
of the United States, the first settlers of the American colonies
would not admit people with disabilities because they believed
such individuals would require financial support. Colonists
enacted settlement laws to restrict immigration of many people,
including those with disabilities. This did not, of course,
prohibit people with disabilities from being born in the colonies
or from acquiring disabilities after they were already settled
there.
- But by 1880,
after the development of almshouses for people who were poor or
in need of basic support, most states and territories had programs
for people with specific types of disabilities. Most of
these programs were large institutions where people who were blind,
deaf, mentally retarded or otherwise physically disabled were
sent for treatment, education or to spend their entire lives.
- The movement west, otherwise
known as the American Frontier Movement, inspired a peculiarly
American belief that social ills could be eradicated by local
initiatives. The concept of "rugged individualism" was born
in the American Frontier and still maintains a powerful hold over
political debate today. In fact, the desire to for independent
living today carries with it the seed of many "rugged individualist"
ideals. For some people with disabilities, this meant they
need not be condemned because they could not earn their own living.
Some community-based services began to emerge, but people with
disabilities were still usually segregated from society as a whole.
Rural areas were the only places where people with disabilities
tended to live with their families in integrated settings.
- Rehabilitation services
on a broad scale were introduced as a federal program following
World War I. The emphasis for these first rehabilitation
programs was on the veteran with a disability who was returning
home to the United States. The need for training or re-training
created the first federally funded program for people with disabilities
-- a program now known as the federal-state vocation rehabilitation
system.
- During the 1940s, the
blind community argued for separate services for people
who were blind based on the belief that people who were blind
did not need rehabilitation but education. Advocates who
were blind argued that rehabilitation is based upon a "medical
model" where the person who is blind needs to be treated and cured
rather than educated to live with blindness. The debate
over what approach to use resulted in a "split" within the vocational
rehabilitation program, allowing state vocational rehabilitation
agencies and agencies serving the blind to become separate entities
within a state.
- Not until the social
change movement during the 1960s were other major services
for people with disabilities seriously considered by federal legislation.
Although the Social Security system provided benefits to those
who had earned sufficient income over a long enough time period
and had become disabled (i.e., unable to work), there was not
attempt to broaden the base of services for people with disabilities
beyond the vocational rehabilitation approach. For the first
time in U.S. history, consumers, advocates and service professionals
began an intensive examination of the human service delivery system
to decide what was missing. Community-based programs for
people with disabilities began growing all over the nation in
an attempt to fill the gaps left by these missing services.
New concepts, new technology and new attitudes were beginning
to make a difference in the lives of people with disabilities."
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