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inclusion

Paved with good intentions

Attempts at inclusion rarely deliver what is promised and can DAN members sought to portray their
even end up excluding people. Robin Jackson gives some organisation as following in the footsteps
of the 1960s civil rights movement. While
examples around schools, campaigning and housing their principal targets were the major

disability charities, such as Mencap, the
Spastics Society (as Scope was known)
ooking back over the past 50 years, I The pressure on her committee to and the Leonard Cheshire Foundation,
wish I could say that I have seen support the policy of inclusion caused broad DAN targets included professionals,
Lsignificant improvements in the quality confusion – and pupils with special needs parents, special schools and residential
of life of people with learning disabilities. became unwitting casualties of this. care settings of any kind.
Let me give a number of examples where Warnock concluded that support for the Particularly disturbing were the depth
improvements have not taken place. policy of inclusion “sprang from hearts in and intensity of the antipathy and venom
the right place” but acknowledged its directed towards these targets.
Schools: ideals against reality implementation had a disastrous legacy. In 2003, disability theorist Wolf
Witness what happened with the The credulity of that same group of Wolfensberger expressed his concern
Warnock Report published in 1978. headteachers was further strained when, at this radicalisation of advocacy
Mary Warnock tried to establish the on a later occasion, they were addressed movements, particularly their increasingly
facts concerning special educational by Sally Tomlinson, a Marxist academic confrontational stance and strident
provision for children and young people who had asserted in her book A Sociology tone, which threatened to antagonise
with special needs but was constrained by of Special Education that special schools and alienate those whose support
the Department of Education, which constituted an integral part of a socially was vital if appropriate services were
provided next to no funding for research stratified educational system. to be developed.
and deliberately restricted access to The inevitable logic of her argument This aggressive approach was likely to
schools and other facilities. was that the system should be have encouraged some local authorities to
This was in marked contrast to the de-stratified which meant the closure withdraw certain activities undertaken by
1964 Plowden Report on primary of special schools. Unsurprisingly, her people with learning disabilities in adult
education and the 1963 Robbins Report audience was not sympathetic to this training centres (ATCs) because of
on higher education. argument – but what they found concerns that they might be represented
In exercising her role as chair, Warnock bewildering was her inability to defend as exploitative.
displayed not only a high degree of naivety her central thesis when subjected For example, one ATC I knew had taken
but also was consistently outmanoeuvred to questioning. particular pride in maintaining its attractive
by the Department of Education. grounds, where the trainees worked.
Not long after the publication of her Antagonistic action Later, it was to receive an instruction to
report, I invited Warnock to address a This lack of attention to the concerns of cease that activity as it was felt by the
group of headteachers and deputy people with learning disabilities led to the local social work department this practice
headteachers of special schools who were birth of the Direct Action Network (DAN) ran counter to current thinking. As a
attending an in-service course in a college in 1989. consequence, the local authority was
of higher education in the south of England. obliged to transfer responsibility for the
My abiding memory of that occasion is maintenance of the grounds to the council
the look of bewilderment on the faces of parks and gardens department.
her audience as she sought to explain Unsurprisingly, the manager was
some of the reasoning behind the report’s incensed as he was aware of the pride
recommendations. It quickly became trainees took in maintaining the grounds
apparent to her audience of experienced and the negative impact that withdrawal
practitioners that she had little idea of from this work would have upon them.
what went on in special schools. I am not writing here as an apologist for
Some years later, she would publicly ATCs as I accept that disappointingly few
and belatedly acknowledge that much of provided a worthwhile service. It is worth
the content of her report was “naive to highlighting, however, what can happen
the point of idiocy” – a conclusion drawn when there is a well thought through idea
by the headteachers much earlier. and the personnel to carry it out.
Warnock was later to argue that her I have in mind here the Engine Shed
committee had become so enamoured project in Edinburgh. This was established
with its own ideals that it had never in 1989 as an innovative training project
thought to question whether local for people with learning disabilities to
authorities would be sufficiently help them improve their confidence, learn
motivated to take on the task of meeting transferable skills in a real work
pupils’ special educational needs in environment and move into paid
mainstream schools. employment in mainstream workplaces.

12 Vol 35 No 4 | Summer 2022 Community Living www.cl-initiatives.co.uk