Gary Warren

541 Days Road, Kingston, ON K7M3R8, CA

The Reclamation Project: The Value of Living Life at the Helm

Stories of life in an institution and the voices that closed them

Gary Warren

“In the beginning, it seemed that everyone was against the closure of institutions.”

I graduated from Wilfred Laurier University and worked as a child care worker with children labelled “emotionally disturbed” at Browndale, a rural institution just south of Huntsville, Ontario. The 90 children, many of whom came from psychiatric hospitals, or failed foster placements, lived in cottages of 7-11 children, aged 4-16 with 3 staff to each cottage. They went to a segregated school on the grounds of the institution. They ate all their meals in one big dining hall. Based on experience gained from Normalization, in Scandinavia, in the mid 1970’s, Browndale bought homes in Huntsville and North Bay. The focus changed from not just providing a loving family environment, but also to support the children to live and interact in the community. Child Care Staff were used to support parents and their children were returned to them. Children started going to regular schools with support. They flourished.

Through Browndale, my wife Marcie and I moved to Bloomington, Illinois where we both worked to repeat this success. The State Governor had created laws to capture street kids, send them to jails or psychiatric centres and to Texas to work as free labour on remote ranches. The opposing political party found this out and made an election campaign out of it. The government then rushed to change and adapted this Canadian model. We used state resources to buy homes, hire and train staff, and bring children to community based homes. That service still runs today.

“We needed tools that shook traditional values”

Back in Canada, after setting up the new centre in North Bay, I accepted a position at what is now called the Institute for Research and Development on Inclusion and Society (IRIS), part of the Canadian Association for Community Living (CACL). Most of my work was to help train people nation-wide in using PASS and PASSING, a practical tool for teaching about inclusion. I also helped to create a national training model for staff working in this new direction. PASSING had a large influence leading to institution closures. A practical, well organized and researched tool, authored by Wolf Wolfensberger, created a PARADIGM SHIFT, a tipping point. Gradually de-institution movements grew in strength, anchored by local, provincial and the national parents’ movements.

PASS and PASSING focussed on the real life experiences of individuals, often creating great discomfort in the ranks of staff, management, and the governments who were responsible for segregated and dehumanizing services. But the leaders who wanted to liberate people had few options. People lived their entire lives in large, isolated places. There must have been a ‘system’ that got them - and kept them - there. Procedures existed and services were organized in such a way so that someone benefitted. The ‘system’ of services limited people at every turn.

“The system had to change. And system change takes time.”

Wolfensberger and others at the Canadian Association started looking for answers and created an idea that needed exploring - COMSERV (Comprehensive Community Based Service Systems). The CACL offered funding and staff support to regional groups who wanted to try out different models. Lethbridge in Alberta was one of the first. Five different regions in Ontario followed, supported by the Provincial Comserv Committee of OACL.

Meanwhile, I left Toronto to work at St. Lawrence College. I became the chair of the OACL ComServ Committee and volunteered with the Thousand Islands ComServ project. We had our hands full, with institutions in Smith Falls, Brockville, Kingston, Cobourg and Picton. But the tide was turning. The momentum of Normalization-trained people, financial help to hire community development staff, and the fact that some of the institutions were literally falling apart, all came together in the late 1970s and early 80’s.

The old army base of Prince Edward Heights in Picton had just received a facelift, but more was needed. Penrose (part of Ongwanada Hospital in Kingston) was built in 1857 as the Rockwood Criminal Lunatic Asylum. Hopkins (also part of Ongwanada) was originally a TB asylum and was falling apart. (*) had just finished an architectural plan to build a new institution. That would literally lock up money and people for years to come. That provided a sense of urgency.

One of the first strategies used to close institutions was to meet with people who were thought to have power to make changes. The OACL ComServ committee met frequently with the various Ontario Ministers of Community Services at the time. The Thousand Islands Group met with regional managers, funded and escorted institution senior staff to places like Pennsylvania, (where the government had ordered closures because the institutions had violated the civil rights of the people who lived there). Presentations were made across Canada. People working to close institutions came together to share ideas.

The Thousand Islands Group offered to help the Eastern Ontario Regional MCSS office make budget decisions about service changes through a new group called the District Working Group (DWG). I was the Chair, and elements of PASSING became the evaluation tool to see if an agency received funds for changes. There was much conflict, including an attempt by the institution staff to take over the local association by buying memberships and installing a Board that was supportive. Through the DWG, the plan to build a new institution was shelved. It was denied permission to build new group homes on the grounds of their offices. The city of Kingston passed bylaws which essentially prevented group homes from creating institution ghettos. The momentum increased.

But success was slow. Many of us on the DWG were always alarmed. There were always people in opposition - staff unions, influential doctors, community people who were afraid of those who had been locked up in such fearsome places, parents who wanted their children to remain in segregation, and parents of children with physical difficulties who wanted their own specialized places. Institution leadership recruited all of the above as “The Friends of etc.” Terms were distorted - children with disabilities were mixed with prisoners at Collin’s Bay Penitentiary and it was called integration. The general public was confused.

“Change starts with one person at a time”.

A new tool was being actively talked about - individualized funding.

A member of our group said it best when he observed that wires communicating reality did not enter the Minister’s office, and they did not lead out either. Political action at that level was a waste of time. We had to focus on one person at a time, create the supports for that one person, get funding for that person and focus on their choices, and learn from the experience. Publicize the success, and move to the next person.

New questions started to be asked. Can an institution or agency, which essentially ‘owns’ a person, and the funding that comes with them, do individualized planning/funding? Basically the individual planning process generates income for the organization. Isn’t that a conflict of interest? Especially when the agency offers a comprehensive range of services? Isn’t a local association in the same position?

The government announced the 5 Year Plan to close institutions as these questions were being asked. I was offered a position at Loyalist College working in the MRC program. I was going to continue my activism, but use the Loyalist students as workers in a new future for people in community settings.

For the Thousand Islands Committee, there were other questions. Did the institution just transfer “their people” to their new group homes? Did they spin off the staff and create a new organization? Was there a ‘draft’ where other organizations received previously institutionalized people for their services? Were the new homes just small copies of the old wards? Can an institution build ‘special’ homes, especially in the same location were their ‘special” staff worked? Can a service get funding for a ‘special’ service that already existed in the community for other people? Eventually all of these happened.

“Two steps forward, one step back.”

In trying to answer those complex questions, the COMSERV leaders predictably ran into trouble with its base. Wolfensberger defined an institution as a place that had an excess of control over someone. Should one ‘community’ agency provide a wide range of services from cradle to grave, even if it is small? Should an agency run a school and then move the graduates to be workers in a sheltered workshop? Was this excessive control? Did it matter if that agency was run by a parent board, and was a member of the provincial and national parent organizations?

Sometimes the search for perfection destroys the good. Is it enough simply to physically move people to better environments? The Five Year Plan of the early 1980’s moved people from large segregated places to small segregated places. Was that enough? The questions became even more complicated and one word that kept getting repeated was “choice”.

“A movement is not permanent”

I recognized that a lot of workers at the new homes used to be staff at large places like Prince Edward Heights (PEH). MRC students received training through placement at such places. Some had worked there during the summer. Others had entire families who worked in the institution. Even the name of the program (Mental Retardation Counsellor) suggested institutionalization.

So the name was changed province-wide to Developmental Services Worker (DSW). Placement locations were changed to places like regular schools. Students who did institution placements during the Loyalist program were watched carefully to see if they were going to join “the Dark Side”.

There was an incident where I took 8 first year students to Prince Edward Heights for a tour. In front of the students and myself, a male staff dragged a man and pushed him to the floor. He lit a match and threw it on the man, saying, “this is how you light things up around here to make him do what you want!” I left with the students I told everyone to NOT discuss the incident. I got 8 pieces of paper and envelopes and had them all write down what they saw. Then we talked about it. I phoned the police. 3 days later lawyers arrived in my office urging me to stop any proceedings as I was jeopardizing the relationship that the college had with PEH. Intentionally the college was participating in major social change. Although the staff member received only a token punishment, a statement from the community had been made. A major respected organization had joined the movement.

While I was the DSW Coordinator, an institution was informed that students would no longer be sent there on placement unless certain activities changed. They threatened publicly, saying that there were NO bad placements. But some activities changed for the better.

Plainfield Children’s Home used nurses who operated under a medical model as their primary staff. Loyalist created an advanced pharmacology training program so they could hire community-oriented staff. Gradually the nurses were replaced, the values of the organization changed, and within 15 years the institution was empty.

“40 years to change a system. And we are only part way there.”