It is too easy to look on the parents of people with learning disabilities - or mental handicaps - as heroic. They are not. They are ordinary people called on to set aside many of their own desires and ambitions for the sake of a son or daughter with a learning disability and, often, with multiple physical disabilities as well. They feel about this the same mixture of love and frustration, determination and regrets as any other ordinary person would feel. To call them heroic is to minimise the human cost to them of what they undertake.
A person whose social life will be severely curtailed for the rest of their lives, or whose other children are suffering from lack of attention, or who has had to abandon a career, may feel many things but a glowing sense of heroism is unlikely to be one of them. It is essential to recognise this fact to understand that the desperation and frustration being expressed by the groups campaigning for a large investment in services in the coming Budget is very real and very deep.
The fact is that they and their loved ones are subjected to severe injustices by Governments which have failed to address the needs of people and families with learning disabilities. It is a grave injustice to send a person with a learning disability home from school at the age of 18, with nothing to do and nowhere to go all day because there are too few day services or suitable work opportunities. And for the parent who works in the home it is the end of such hours of freedom as (usually) she had enjoyed at least some of the time.
It is surely unjust that a person with a learning disability is kept them at home until the last parent dies and then, without preparation of any kind, is placed in a nursing home or other institution until a "proper" place is found for them. All at once, they lose parent, family, home and familiar surroundings. The emotional trauma can only be imagined - Jean Vanier, the founder of the L'Arche communities, once described a mentally handicapped man lying on his mother's grave howling with grief. What people with learning disabilities lack in intellectual skills they often more than make up for in the depth of their emotions.
This is why parents are desperate that their sons or daughters should be introduced gradually to residential care while the parents are still alive - to spare them the awful shock of losing everything together. This year, indubitably, the Government has the money to put this right.
