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Eighth World Congress on Mental Retardation, Nairobi, Kenya, 1982

When I started to think about the topic of today's meeting, my mind took me back about ten years to the League's Symposium in Lisbon, Portugal, on the development and operation of national societies and their relationship to the International League. We considered how the League could encourage and strengthen such national societies, what their problems were, and what kind of challenges presented themselves. In a paper prepared for that meeting I pointed out some of the highlights in the development of our associations during the preceding decade, in fact the first decade of the League's existence.

Among these were the following:

1. There had been a growing recognition that the mentally handicapped child was not a "child forever," but, like all other human beings, grew up to become an adult. In addition to changes in the specific programs the associations offered, this, just then, was causing League members to drop the word "children" from their name. We were becoming conscious of the inadequacy or inappropriateness of certain other words we were using. Even though the League had adopted two years earlier our Declaration of General and Special Rights of the Mentally Retarded, its full meaning had not yet been absorbed in the mainstream of the League members' thinking and vocabulary.

2. I pointed out that the spectacular growth of some of our member societies had brought with it problems in the relationships and balance between the volunteers (the parents) and the professional staff in their respective roles in the administration of our societies.

3. My third point dealt with the need to bring new blood into the Society. What could be done to make room for younger parents?

4. I spoke also of the need for continued emphasis on what had been, from the very beginning, a main characteristic of our movement, the mutual aid directly from parent to parent, well exemplified by "Action Interfamiliale" then under development by UNAPEI, our French member society.

Since those days the League's member associations have made tremendous progress, but in some way or other the problems I then enumerated are still with us, and in at least some of the areas, it has been the very progress that has led to an accentuation and intensification of these questions.

I propose to use the traditional journalistic approach of WHO, WHAT, and HOW to describe the situation as I see it today. Furthermore, in view of the limited time available, I shall concern myself with the problems faced by the large metropolitan local associations of industrialized countries.

It is in the large local societies that we often find today a rift, a chasm between the old leadership group and the new members. In many cases our societies were started from within the upper middle class group, the well-to-do though not necessarily rich people. Their goals often resulted from a desire to obtain life time security for their children. The newer membership, often persons of lesser means, are seeking more limited, more immediate services. Furthermore, with few exceptions, our large metropolitan societies, which by sheer weight of numbers and financial resources have a powerful influence on the national organization, have failed to attract the underprivileged families who make up such a large proportion of a metropolitan population. Although this failure has been commented upon not infrequently, I have yet to see a study which deals with this crucial weakness in our organizational pattern in a meaningful way.

From my own visits to such large cities' associations, I would list as possible causes the setting and time of membership meetings the traditional emphasis on association procedures (e.g., an agenda full of financial committee and sub-committee reports), and often also a guest speaker with a technical vocabulary that confuses rather than enlightens.

Increasingly we also observe a generational gap between the old leadership and the young families we wish to attract. This is not just a difference in age, but very much also a difference in needed services, and a difference in the general orientation to the problem of mental handicap; that is to say, in some areas the young families are more enlightened.

It is of course ironic that this more enlightened approach to mental handicap on the part of today's young families is the result of the successful efforts of our pioneers in providing educational information to the general public, and in overcoming old prejudices. I have rarely visited, in recent years, one of our large city associations, well staffed and rich in programs, which did not convey disappointment that so few "new" young parents could be recruited into membership (even from the parents who are using services provided by the association in a variety of aid programs).

Some years ago I observed with great satisfaction that many of our associations had started youth groups from among secondary school pupils or university students. It seemed to me that this was a most promising effort to recruit young people who could grow into leadership or who would in any case provide eventually useful indirect community support. However, recently I have observed and heard little along such lines. But I do remember well the valuable contribution of a member of such a youth group in Sweden attending a League symposium on volunteers in 1971.