EDITORIAL

Trudeau Center’s 50 years

Posted 8/19/14

Fifty years is a lifespan for some people – a long time during which a lot can happen. And in another context, 50 years is a comparatively short span…little more than a blink of an eye.

The …

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EDITORIAL

Trudeau Center’s 50 years

Posted

Fifty years is a lifespan for some people – a long time during which a lot can happen. And in another context, 50 years is a comparatively short span…little more than a blink of an eye.

The upcoming 50th anniversary of the J. Arthur Trudeau Memorial Center reflects both perspectives. On the one hand, attitudes toward the disabled have taken years to change. On the other, thanks to the work of a few, change has come rather quickly.

The late J. Arthur Trudeau and his wife, Evelyn, were visionaries. More than 50 years ago, when the disabled were referred to as “retards” and most of them were housed in state institutions out of sight from the public, the Trudeaus believed there could be a better life for their son, Kenneth. They found others who felt the same was true for their children. They started the Parents Council for Retarded Children in 1951, which in less than 20 years joined with similar groups in West Warwick and Coventry to create the Kent County Association for Retarded Children.

There is so much more to the organization the Trudeaus helped start. The center was incorporated in 1964, and it grew from there both in terms of its physical presence, attendance and programs. In 1969 the center introduced its early intervention program for children less than three years old. It built a recreational building that continues to offer programs, and in the early ’70s it built a vocational rehabilitation workshop on Post Road.

Meanwhile, attitudes and the treatment were changing. “De-institutionalization” became the catchword as people moved out of state institutions such as the Ladd School and into the community. “Retards” weren’t shunned or hidden but rather applauded for their achievements as Special Olympians. They were pictured on the first page of this newspaper and many others. Group homes, which initially were apprehensively viewed by neighboring residents, filled the role previously held by state institutions. The disabled were no longer warehoused but living in environments that could be called home and independent of their families, just like other adults.

The Trudeau Center also provided them a place to work with the construction of the vocational building, later called the Patterson Center, on Commonwealth Avenue.

New programs including Pathways and the Crayons Child Care & Family Services have come to life. It is truly a remarkable story that has evolved in a lifetime and has been the life’s work of so many.

It continues to evolve.

When a Justice Department study was critical of the Trudeau Center for confining people – albeit that they were happy to be together and doing that they did – to a workshop with limited challenges and opportunities, the center came up with its Employment First initiative. It didn’t take generations for the center to establish its Employment Concepts Department. It all happened in months…a blink of an eye.

The Trudeau Center’s mission to serve the disabled hasn’t changed, and we suspect over the next 50 years it won’t. That kind of commitment is enduring and to be celebrated.

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