Public Lecture: Retirement for People with intellectual disabilities and Red 334

The University 'Head quartered' in Ealing, West London University holds a series of lectures that are open to the public on its St. Mary's campus.

At St. Mary's Campus -Waiting for the lecture to start.

The lecture held last night was presented by an Australian academic, Christine Bigby, Director of the Living with Disability Research Centre, Melbourne and was on the topic of :

 'Retirement for people with intellectual disabilities: A last chance to be included in the community.'

[Note in Australia the language used to describe what is called in the UK - here we'd probably describe the topic as 'People with Learning difficulties']

The talk was introduced with a number of statistics reminding us generally of aging populations and demographic change.


In fact I found the topic as a whole very interesting and as well as thinking about those who do have learning difficulties I thought about how the wider population manages the move from full-time work to a life of (predominantly) leisure.

There are a number of issues around moving older people who are 'challenged'  from work to a less structured lifestyle and  Christine who has worked in the field for about 25 years gave a well illustrated talk with video interviews of those involved in fields trials in Australia.

Trevor Baylis CBE  was an interested member of the audience

The three pillars that can be used to judge the effectiveness and success of how people live their lives, these are *Health, *Participation, and *Security.


Whereas the general population often  has a form of 'Capital' that they can bring with them on retirement in the form of relationships, experience and property those who have been more actively supported in the community tend to hold all their value in the sheltered nature of their work and accommodation this tied into  resistance to change means that the idea of a retirement or scaling back on their normal commitments can be intensely unsettling and worrying.

The examples shown in the presentation were of individuals who were accepted into groups where they were able to participate and often feel valued but the limits of groups to accommodate the marginalised individuals and retain their  integrity was also clear (this was generally just one person in a group or activity to allow for facilitation and mentoring).

The overall message (for me) of the lecture was that people with learning difficulties should not be excluded from the benefits of retirement but some efforts are required by government (local and/or central) to ensure that these people are not excluded.

Red 334

There seems to a be a norm around colours and flavours for potato based snacks-

Traditional for salted/original