FAQ: What is normalisation?
Normalisation is a set of principles that underlie the idea that people with a learning disability should live in ordinary places, doing ordinary things, with ordinary people: essentially experiencing the ‘normal’ patterns of everyday life.
The principles of normalisation have been behind the move away from institutional care towards community-based supports. The ideas of normalisation began to be worked up in Scandinavia, and were developed further in the USA.
As community based services developed however, it became clear that as well as people being ‘in’ the community, there was an issue of attitudes towards people with disabilities.
In the USA, Wolfensberger developed the idea of normalisation, the concept of ‘social role valorisation’, which suggests that attention should be given to countering poor attitudes by helping people with disabilities to take on valued social roles, for example as family members, neighbours, employees etc.
Whilst this was a response to a set of attitudes held in ‘society’, there was some concern to ensure that the individual was not lost in the rush to social change. Writers like O’Brien therefore began to see social role valorisation in relation to other key concepts like individual choice, respect, and the development of competence.
Normalisation therefore is about creating normal experiences through service settings and attitudes, and responses to people. It is not understood to be about making people ‘normal’, as this would be extremely difficult to define, and perhaps a dubious aim.
Normalisation as a set of principles therefore remains influential in service development alongside the use of person centred planning to identify what it would take to offer ‘normal’ opportunities for living, work, friendships and relationships for individuals with learning disabilities.
More Information
Mencap paper on Changing Attitudes to People with a Learning Disability
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