After experience as a nursing assistant in an institution I gained a degree in psychology and philosophy. As a student I was a volunteer at a hostel for children with learning disabilities, an early example of community care in the 1960s. Wishing to choose learning disability as a dissertation topic I was referred for supervision to Professor Jack Tizard, a pioneer researcher into the possibilies of community care in the 1950s, 60s and 70s.
My dissertation was a study of the children's hostel which helped me obtain a post in a project Jack Tizard had established, led by another early pioneer of community services Dr Albert Kushlick. It was an investigation into the feasibility of bringing not just the most able people out of institutions into community care but everyone regardless of degree or kind of disability.
During this time I became a founder member of the pressure group then called Campaign for the Mentally Handicapped (later Values Into Action) and I took part in the first conference of people with learning disabilities in 1971 which stimulated the development of the self-advovacy movement in America and the UK. I then joined what was then called The Spastics Society (later Scope) at their training facility on disability, Castle Priory College, organising courses on a wide range of disability with an emphasis on community services. During this period I received a grant to spend five weeks studying self-advocacy in America, resulting in a book We can Speak For Ourselves in 1982.
I then joined a friend, Alan Tyne, in establishing an organisation, originally called 'The Community and Mental Handicap Educational and Research Association', to bring pioneer teaching and service evaluation developed in America to the UK. We introduced John O'Brien to this country and we propagated his teaching and that of Wolf Wolfensberger on the concept of 'normalisation' (later developed as 'social role valorisation'). In 1991 I became a lecturer in social work at Reading University, teaching on work with people with learning disabilities, research methods and anti-oppressive practice.
During that time I wrote textbooks on Social Work with People with Learning Difficulties and Anti-Oppressive Practice in Health and Social Care. After retirement in 2007 I have continued to write articles and contribute to conferences on learning disability. Articles included in the Citizen Network Library are on self-advocacy, friendship and the history of community-based services.
I live in Trowbridge, Wiltshire, and am married to Boni (afrer her maiden name Boniface). She was a highly effective manager of social care based in ordinary housing, pioneering collective team management and person-centred thinking and practice for many years until her retirement in 2014. We often say that I was involved in propagating theories and philosophies that underpin community care, while she provided my credibility by actually putting it into practice.
