Spastics? (1969)

Oh. Uh, they're a special unit on their own with a what? Deformed deformities. Someone that hasn't got quite all its faculties in some way or another, either speech or limb or something. Well, um, it's a person that's deformed. Um, well, I've heard that they're doing quite a lot for them. They have funds and what have you, you know. Um, actually I think we've got a box at work for them. It's a child that's either mentally handicapped or physically handicapped. Isn't it? Spastics. Well, it's a poor old shepherd, you know. Got spastics. Very well mal treated. Is he? There is a hospital round in Grange Road. A school. It is called Edlesford School, Kingston. We are the only school in Surrey, only day special school in Surrey that caters for physically handicapped children. We have a capacity for 72, but at the moment there are only 70. We have quite a number of a variety of uh handicaps such as spastics, muscular distrophies, congenital hearts, spinoipidas, hemophilia, um a few old polomalitis and uh of course they all just get on together as one unit. They're all very happy together and they help one another. they don't appear to realize that they are handicapped. Even I in my class I I try and make them help each other so that I a child who is very handicapped will probably be sitting next to a child who's less handicapped. Um some of the children who can walk will go and get the chairs for the other children. We do pottery and they really turn out some wonderful stuff when you think of their age and the limited feeling they have in their hands. they can't use their hands to the extent to get the pressure on it. Some of the things they make are quite interesting, great fun. It's difficult to sort of assess the advantages that they would gain from the physical treatment here, but one of the things that we aim to do is to prevent deformities. And it isn't possible to assess this the value of this because one would need to see that same child so many years without receiving attention or physiootherapy etc. and comparing it with itself having received it. Steven is now eight and he was apparently quite normal up to 14 months when we first realized something was he was just slightly under the weather for 2 or 3 days. And from then onwards instead of being energetic and wanting to do things like he had previously he was just floppy and and couldn't be bothered to sit up even or or do anything. So, as my wife said, uh, went quite floppy and didn't want to do anything. Seemed to want to sit in the one position. And the thing that I noticed most of all was that he held his left arm up against his chest in one position only and wouldn't move it. We were brought up to it gently. They didn't know at the beginning what was wrong. Um, they thought he had some sort of brain virus. brain infection caused by a virus. Um and as I say they thought first of all that he had a prius and that when he started to get some movement back we thought we were over first hurdle but the prius had masked um involuntary movement and actually it's not his left side but it's all for limbs which are affected and um as it's not progressive you it's not as it's not as frightening as it would appear to an outsider that doesn't doesn't worry him. He knows he's a if if there's any mention of it or wireless or anything like this, you know, he sort of says, "Oh, me." you. But Steve went to the center for children in Chelsea and um I know when I first saw them at Chelsea, I suppose I was shocked because some of them um can't control their faces and their arms and they flop about the place and after a while you get to know the children and you you forget about their bodies. you sort of see them and and um you take it for granted that they can't sit or they can't hold this and they can't do that and it doesn't worry you but it it must do outsiders until they get used to the children. I think the parents don't seem to have any particular complaints, but probably it is that they're quite happy to feel that there is a school where their child can go and the thoughts of what is going to happen to them when they leave school doesn't occur until quite late in their school life and they seem even then to be to feel that something will be done for them. I don't think that I've really looked into the future on this. It's something that you can't do because you don't know when he's finished improving. If someone told me this is as far as he'd go, well then I'd have to start looking into the future. When they leave the school, there is not much for the to go to. Some of the other children can go to various training centers. as other handicaps I should say can go to various training centers and be trained for a shortage of places for adolescent young spastics. As far as I know at the moment there are no government sponsored sheltered workshops for spastics. These seem to be provided by um voluntary organizations like the society. I think that the government should definitely take steps to provide more sheltered workshops. In this case here, we are fortunate in having in Kingston a spastics work center. I've been driving the ambulance for 4 months. Uh I start work at Harperate. We leave the garage at Harate. Um and I pick up the local ones first. Dart as far as Isisha and pick up um Jennifer Julie who lives at Oshot and then I go back through um East Mosy and pick up some families who are very interested and concerned about them and um you never feel that they're very much alone. Um there's a possibility that older spastics you might find this atmosphere of them being on their own because the parents perhaps have died and they're too old to really belong to a family anymore. But with these younger ones, the 18 and 19 year olds, they've got brothers and sisters at home. And um David, for instance, always has children in the garden when I pick him up. I find that people who um haven't worked with handicapped people and don't know a lot about spastics feel that it would be rather a depressing job. They have to have such a lot done for them. And um people tend to think that because they're handicapped, they're very miserable. In actual fact, it's a bit like being in one big happy family and um the fact that it is a work center um is for their benefit and um I just do a job with the rest of the staff trying to keep them at the work center and keep them happy. I'm the works manager of this work center at Kingston and um the whole idea of the society introducing work centers the fact that it was known that there were many hundreds indeed thousands of of spastics who were destined to spend their life at home literally doing nothing. It was in fact a life sentence. It's the parents' efforts that have got this place. They went searching for a piece of land. They bought the piece of land and the head office put the building up. We moved in here in January and then we increased. We took boys from Beetlesford School first. They came from the handicap school and so we gradually increased until we got 27 trainees. The cost to run this place annually is £7,000. And uh of this we recover a certain amount of income from the sale of our calendars, from contract work or local industry. And we also run money-making activities such as a summer fate, uh a dance perhaps, and um jumble sales, bingo, and the like. All this of course doesn't add up to £7,000. So we are therefore dependent on the society to make up to that figure and my name is Miss Appleard and I'm 35. I don't know whether I'm right in saying this, but I think people that you know like here, I think they've got more time for you because I don't want to be selfish, but I think the outside world haven't got much time for you. Most of my friends that I was brought up with, they've left home. And um and of course then it leaves you on your own. And um of course when I thought I was covered here, it was really lovely to me because you know when you're on your own, a thing like this means a lot to you. I you know I mean I have a good job. I've I've got very good parents but I mean as you you know yourself you they can't go on living forever and so therefore I would you know it would put my mind at rest to know what was going to happen to me cuz after all it is a big worry isn't it? My name is Ted Hill. I've been working here for 18 months. I'm a parapolgia uh That means for the people that don't understand that I'm a that the spasticity has attacked the my lower limbs that my legs in this case. I went to Lords recently. Uh it's a very good there is a very certainly a very good atmosphere there. There's something on the planet. I kind of stand it. But when you get to Louis, there's a feeling of peace. I don't know whether it's psychological or whether I really don't understand it. I learned to type at home. And I bought myself a typewriter and um I didn't have any typing lessons at all but I taught myself by simply um when you're practicing you know the manager discovered that I could type quite well you know reasonably well and he has well I virtually um sorry trained me to to do his office work in the way He likes it. Ruth has been one of the she was one of the original ones that's came when she first came. Now when she was quite young, she used to do a paper round uh which is a marvelous feat for her because I mean she's bad walker and I think she did this for some years out in all weathers still living in the papers. Uh she's very very good worker. In fact, we have made her assistant supervisor. Uh, I know I can leave the workroom and Ruth will take charge and look after it for me. The rest of the spastics have great confidence in her and I know they go to her with quite a few of their problems. Well, we have 30 that that is the maximum that the national assistance board that we are allowed to be paid without having our assistance cut. Jane herself has improved a lot. I mean, she came here full of apprehension, but uh now as you see, although sometimes her confidence goes with us, she's very confident. Well, just have a practice first. Have a practice, Jane. Come on. If I speak slowly, if I talk slowly and perhaps again an end which [Music] I got to say that again she's got the giggles again if I [Music] and perhaps again and show I understood. David came to us straight from Beatlesford school. Uh he left school at the age of 15 because he considered he was too old to stay. Uh he's full of life. He's um very bright and cheerful and a very good worker. I don't think he got on too good at school because he's an individualist. He didn't want to be like the others at school. He wanted to be different. If he felt like playing truent, David would play truent. Luckily here, he's stayed and although he's always talking of leaving us and getting a job outside, he still arrives. I had to come to work, work all the day, come home, go on my bike fishing or anything like that and then come back, go out somewhere. We go out pictures and uh go to play football and cricket and all that jazz. He gets around. He he gets um he sort of goes to places and uh even helps in a cafe at the weekends. He doesn't uh sit around at home cuz David comes from a large family. I think this is where this all comes from. Naturally, they've got um romance in their mind. I think the same as anybody else. Ra is married to a He's lucky because uh the person that he's married isn't too badly handicapped to cook. You see, I have more violent movements than Ray, but he is more he is more jerky in a different kind of way because he can use both his hands a little and I can only use the one hand. You see, it's all between us, him helping me and me helping him. In that way, we've got through life quite well. refused to have a business that was something that occupied his mind. Well, then he had to sell the business and he he really needs his mind is so active and his body won't obey his mind. So, he's got to have something that he can do after he have this nervous breakdown. the the the doctors thought that the work center was just a thing to get him using his hands as power as possible and also to mix with people and um and get him amongst people again. You see spastics? Well, listen. Poor old chets. You know, got spastics. But he maltreated is he [Music]