Chapter 1 - continued

The more specialised and, therefore, selective developments in special school education were increasingly seen by parents and, retrospectively in many cases, by pupils themselves, as being an exciting new opportunity.

Access was not based on wealth or class-based privilege, however, the longer term expectations of disabled people still remained limited.

Two years after the National Assistance Act 1948, Birmingham Corporation published its Handbook of 1950 which set out the new duties of the local authority towards its disabled citizens. Welfare services in 1950 were based at 102 Edmund Street and the Chief Welfare Officer for Birmingham was F. Kimberley. The Handbook reads:

“The National Assistance Act, 1948, formed part of the new social legislation to bring the Poor Laws to an end on 5 July, 1948. On, and from, that date the former Public Assistance Committee was superseded by a Welfare Committee appointed by the city council.

“The council was no longer concerned with monetary assistance to persons who were without the resources to meet their requirements or whose resources must be supplemented in order to meet their requirements, and hospital nursing and treatment of the chronic sick, responsibility and, therefore, having passed to the National Assistance Board and the Regional Hospital Board, respectively, on the same date.”

The main strategic objective of Birmingham's Welfare Committee in 1950 was to provide residential accommodation for “people who, by reason of age and infirmity or any other circumstances, are in need of care and attention which is not otherwise available to them”.

In addition to residential care, arrangements were being operated to further promote the welfare of:

“persons who are blind, deaf or dumb and other persons who are substantially or permanently handicapped by illness, injury, or congenital deformity, or such other disabilities, as may in future be prescribed through instruction and employment of methods for overcoming the effects of their disabilities and the provision of workshops and residential hostels.”

The Handbook also introduced the idea that the local authority would have discretionary power to provide its services in partnership with voluntary organisations which the council would subsidise or even employ as their agents, provided that those voluntary organisations “are registered in accordance with the provisions of the Act”.

The 1950 Handbook also provides a list of Special Welfare Services which were largely aimed at people with sensory impairment. Of approximately 1,400 blind people on Birmingham's register in 1950, many were being encouraged to take up training at the Birmingham Royal Institution for the Blind in the following trades: bedding and upholstery; mat and coal-bag making; boot repairing; light engineering; knitting; brush making; basket making; piano tuning and repairing; typing.

A Home Workers' Scheme was also being developed which split trades into gender specific groups with men being encouraged to take up trades such as piano tuning, chimney sweeping, firewood chopping and shop keeping, whilst women were encouraged to be music teachers, typists and machine knitters. Where blind men were instructed in basket making, blind women were instructed in fancy basket making.

Even the advantages of some intensively resourced Special Education schools did not generally enhance future opportunities for disabled school leavers.

When David Barnsley left Carlson House School at the age of 18 in 1959 his teachers helped him to acquire immediate employment at the Lucas factory in Great King Street. But the initial novelty of finding employment as a disabled school leaver would be quickly worn away as David discovered that the manufacturing sector, like most areas of employment in those days, was largely inaccessible and fundamentally discriminatory:

“The school staff were going around local businesses looking for employment opportunities for school leavers from Carlson House and they went to Lucas's in Great King Street. Mrs Marlow was the school's second headmistress — she met with Lucas's and said they had a prospective school leaver with 'O' levels, so I was sent for interview and was given the job. I left school in July 1959 and started work at Lucas's on 7th September 1959. I was scared stiff before the interview, but they were quite pleasant.

“They said I could have a job in ‘suppliers accounts’. Unfortunately I fell foul of the fact that I was rather slow. You had to put all the goods inwards and open invoices in alphabetical order and match them by 300 a day.

“A bloke came round with a book to check if you were doing it properly and it never occurred to me to lie like everyone else – they never counted them anyway, so I was deemed to be too slow and given all the dirty little jobs in the office to do instead.

“I stuck at it though because £5 17s 6d was a lot of money in those days, of which my father took £3 for accommodation and the petrol and oil for my trike was five and four pence a gallon. So even though they gave me all the dead filing to do, at least I had a job.

“You'd see the supervisor taking people to one side and he'd tell them they'd got a rise, saying ‘but don't tell anyone’ and then they'd all go into the gents and find they'd all got a rise of 5s 5d. They put me on packing for a while which no one else ever did before or after me. I was packing orders which should have been grade 8 money, but I was still paid at grade 5 money.

“For the next few years people would come in and ask me how to do things and I'd tell them because I'd been there a long time, but then they'd get good high-powered jobs and I'd be stuck on grade 5 money.”

From an interview between David Barnsley and Peter Millington / Pinpoint Magazine – New Year 2004 edition.