Personal Relationships, the Handicapped and the Community

The integration of the handicapped into full community life poses difficult problems which have so far been largely glossed over in simplistic debates. It is the quality of life which ultimately needs examining, and for the handicapped this cannot be divorced from close comparisons with the experiences of normal people. The full acceptance of the handicapped by their normal peers is probably an unattainable ideal. This little book examines two important aspects of the attempt to integrate the physically handicapped of normal intelligence in four European countries, to see how nearly this ideal is currently being approached. Adequate assistance in maintaining relative independence in community settings is an essential first step, which is examined in Part One, and separate contributions outline the different approaches to residential provision. The Spastics Society seems to have suffered from an