Chapter Seven - Maturation

Summary

Normalization is the utilization of means which are as culturally normative as possible, in order to establish and/or maintain personal behaviors and characteristics which are as culturally normative as possible.

—Wolfensberger et al., 1972, p. 28

The changing ideology in the field of IDD significantly impacted the maturation of the Rochester UCEDD. At the heart of this ideological shift was the principle of Normalization. It was first defined in Sweden by Bengt Nirje (1969) and championed extensively in the United States and Canada by Wolf Wolfensberger (Wolfensberger et al., 1972). This principle was based upon the concept that people with IDD, no matter what their disability, would benefit by immersion into the most typical level of lifestyle they could manage. This philosophy formed the basis for the deinstitutionalization movement, followed by elimination of barriers to full inclusion in society. It would take decades and promulgation of some very important changes in federal civil rights legislation before old approaches to services and supports would give way to real change.

SCDD was not a self-contained unit with large resources when it became a UCEDD Satellite Center. Therefore, the ensuing program had to emerge through the judicious use of core resources to recruit collaborations and partnerships with colleagues and investigators from the University of Rochester, and from other higher education centers. Partnerships were also expanded with local and state providers and consumer groups, all of which had begun to move towards a focus on deinstitutionalization and normalization. These liaisons helped to extend the network and to develop funding bases, largely from state resources at first. By creatively sharing faculty and staff positions and governance with other agencies, permanent and systemic structures were eventually achieved.

Postgraduate Training Programs

Clinical training in Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics of medical students, residents, and fellows, mainly in the Departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry, was underway during the 1960s and early 1970s. The receipt of federal UCEDD funds, however, enabled trainee and faculty support for interdisciplinary training, which quickly grew to include as many as 10 disciplines. As soon as the UCEDD Satellite Center was funded in 1978, Ms. Burns became the training director and a curriculum was developed composed of clinical rotations and a year-long credit-bearing core course. The first trainees included the disciplines of Psychology, Pediatrics, Social Work, Speech Language Pathology, and Nursing.