Respond

The Hertford History Project, and the associated Learning Disability History Website, were created to provide a historical overview of institutions for people with learning disabilities. Here David O’Driscoll, the man behind the project, explains why he believes that recording and learning from this history is so important. 

The ongoing demise of the long stay hospital system is stimulating a developing curiosity in learning disability history. We need to understand why intelligent men and woman working within and managing the long stay hospital system came to the decisions they did. There is a widespread fear that by talking so service users about their past that we are ‘opening a can of worms’. It seems that many support staff associate institutions only with abuse, lacking the knowledge, skills, and sometimes even the interest to help service users to discuss their history. As a result there is generally little known about the service user’s experiences in these institutions and if we do not collect this information now, we, and more importantly the service user, could lose it forever. I believe it is useful for support staff to reflect on the changes in social policy towards people with learning disabilities, to think about the reasons why these institutions were created in the first instance and to learn from some of their mistakes.

Recent reports in the media about the negative experiences of people with learning disabilities and their families would indicate that learning disabilities’ services have failed to learn from the past. (In our last edition of Journal, we reported the investigation into services run by Cornwall Partnership NHS Trust that exposed a culture of abuse, neglect and bad practice – Journal editor).

Maybe if we can encourage a better understanding and greater awareness of the history of people with learning disabilities then we can truly develop a new strategy for the 21st century.

The Hertfordshire History Project was set up to protect the medical records of people with learning disabilities who had lived in long stay hospitals in Hertfordshire and to help people with learning disabilities who had lived in these hospitals to reclaim and learn about their own history. We have almost a full collection of patients’ medical records currently stored at Harperbury – an estimated 10,000 files from Harperbury, Leavesden and Cell Barnes hospitals.

We have also developed a leaflet on how service users can access their records.

Mabel Cooper, who has lived for many years at St Lawrence’s hospital in Surrey , has written about her experiences of looking at her medical records:

“There is so much I didn’t know that I’m finding out now. I went to St Lawrence’s and I went to the archives. Some of it, like the names they called you in those days, hurt a little but otherwise I thought it was great. It was something I needed to find out.”

The other aspects of our work include supporting staff to do historical work through conferences, training events and consultations. I am currently exploring the possibility of setting up a permanent display about history.