Library Collections: Document: Full Text

This type of an institutional organization would assure as much the effectiveness of the medical program as of the training function and the specific professional background of the administrator will be less important.

One may ask where the kind of boarding home program so ably described yesterday by Mr. Pichey would be assigned. This question raises a very important issue as we plan for the trainable retarded who will need different types of care at different stages of his life career: Will the institution be the focal point of planning and as such have a foster home program as an extension of its residential program or will the focal point be a community based agency which then would handle foster care both as a substitute for and sequel to institutional care?

From what I have just now outlined you have gathered that I attribute "The Lost Years" of the trainable child your Institutions Committee talks about, to the lack of an adequate functional approach in our institutions, to insufficient attention to the widely differing individual needs of the resident. This is exemplified not just in the problems of professional leadership we have just discussed but also in the type of "rank and file" working force institutions utilize.

Two years ago at this Convention a representative of the psychiatric nursing profession strongly made the point that only persons with her background and not just general nurses could adequately staff mental retardation institutions. This of course one cannot agree with. The strikingly differing needs of the various departments of our institutions need personnel with correspondingly different background and training. In some areas we need the psychiatric nurse, in others the pediatric nurse, and in many of the units where we have the trainable children we need people with experience in child care, not nursing. Where do we find such people? They may come from good, small childrens' institutions from the kindergarten and nursery school field, or we may have to train them ourselves.

This morning Dr. Rosenzweig gave us a most detailed and lucid picture of the training needs of the severely retarded child. Obviously, even the best of institutions will have difficulty to deliver the full measure of his charge. I have tried to indicate here to-day in the limited time at my command some of the basic changes we need to effect in the structure and philosophy of our institutions, so more of the "Lost Years" can be turned into years of gain and growth for our severely retarded children.