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When any local authority or statutory body takes over the responsibility for a social
service there must be a clear definition of the categories of people entitled to benefit.
A handicapped person is defined in the National Assistance Act 1948, "as a person who
appears to the authority to be substantially and permanently handicapped by illness,
injury or congenital deformity (not being exclusively attributable to blindness or partialsightedness,
deafness or dumbness or a combination of those particular infirmities as
defined by the respective schemes made by the authority under Section 29 of the Act)
or such other disabilities as may from time to time be prescribed by the Minister by
regulations made under the Act, and who is in need of assistance under the scheme."
The Act goes on to divide the causes of disablement into three different categories—
illness, injury and congenital abnormality; but because the stage of life at which a person
is affected plays such an important part in his ability to adjust to his handicap, classification
by the age of onset will give a clearer idea of the problems that are presented.
(1) Those with congenital deformities and defects. These people have never
known all faculties and therefore adjust best.
(2) Those whose defects were acquired early in life in the formative years. These
people can also be helped over their disabilities by special schooling.
(3) Those who have been handicapped in later life by chronic illness, e.g. heart
disease; or accidents, e.g. loss of a limb etc. People in this category find it
more difficult to adjust.
We are concerned here with the end result of all three groups— the handicapped
adult who is not able to find employment and who needs help in adjusting to life at
home. People in the first two groups are the responsibility of the health and education
departments in their early years and much is being done for them as children. Their
problems begin when they leave the shelter of their special schools and have to compete
for employment with normal healthy school leavers. They will rapidly adjust to community
life if we tackle their problems immediately by giving them training, as they
have been given schooling, that is suited to their "ability and aptitude." (The policy
recently adopted by the Ministry of Labour in days of low employment not to train
these children unless employment can be guaranteed them is, one hopes, only a temporary
step backwards). Otherwise, they find as young adults that their disabilities have
become an insuperable obstacle, after they have learnt to lead a near-normal school life,
and they become resentful, mistrustful and difficult at work; they frequently change jobs
and often after two years are permanently unemployed.
"Half-way house" training schemes between school and employment would overcome
some of the difficulties, and a great extension of the present limited facilities for
training handicapped 16—18 year-olds is urgently needed. Until this is done it is inevitable
that these young people should develop into home-bound, handicapped adults
needing to have ordinary social services brought to them and becoming dependent on
outside help in the home. They then become, like those handicapped in adult life
through illness or accident, the responsibility of the welfare departments.
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