For this activity you?ll be watching a short piece of film edited from a longer BBC film, ‘Children with a difference?, made in 2004. The film features Lesley Learmonth making the transition in Glasgow from her parents? home to her own flat.
Watch the video and note down how Lesley and her parents feel about her move.
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Transcript
Lesley?s feelings about moving to her own flat
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Lesley says she likes to be independent; she wants to be like everybody else and she also wants to ‘be myself?. However, she also says that it feels ‘strange? in her flat and she felt a bit ‘sad? to be packing up her things and leaving the home where she?s always lived.
Lesley?s mother?s feelings about Lesley moving to her own flat
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Lesley?s mother says she?s always felt that Lesley was ‘our child, our responsibility?. Now she wants Lesley to have her independence though she says she didn?t want Lesley to go.
Lesley?s father?s feelings about Lesley moving to her own flat
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Lesley?s father is pleased with what they?ve achieved for Lesley; they acted on her wishes as soon as she said she wanted to leave home. He says it?s a satisfying feeling and though it?s a ‘big step? for Lesley it has given them ‘a lot of hope for the future?. He?s perhaps feeling Lesley will be secure in her own place if there ever comes a time when neither he nor her mother are able to carry on supporting her.
Finally, check out Lesley?s dates against Part 3 of the Lennox Castle timeline. How have things changed since she was born?
Interactive content appears here. Please visit the website to use it.Looking at Part 3 of the timeline, you?ll see that Lesley was born in 1970 when Lennox Castle Hospital was at full strength. Like her, of course, most children with learning disabilities lived at home, in the community, though we heard Lesley?s mother mention a boy whose parents died and who then got placed in ‘an emergency bed? somewhere. Lesley has been lucky.
You might have contrasted Lesley?s early life and her move into independence, supported by her parents who?ll be nearby, with young people who grew up in Lennox Castle and who were then faced with the task of making a new life in the community without close family support.
During Lesley?s lifetime things changed with the development of new policies concerning the lives of people with learning disabilities and with a change in attitude towards care in large institutions.
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