Disability and Mothering: Liminal Spaces of Embodied Knowledge

13. From Surrender to Activism: The Transformation of Disability and Mothering at Kew Cottages, Australia

183 13 From Surrender to Activism The Transformation of Disability and Mothering at Kew Cottages, Australia C o r i n n e M a n n i n g This oral history of mothering at Kew Cottages, Australia,1 provides an understanding of the ways in which mothering roles evolved and changed over time as attitudes toward parental involvement in the lives of institutionalized children altered. While the experiences of mothers has often been absent from previous historical accounts of institutional living, I have foregrounded their testimony as well as the voices of women staff as active agents. That silence reflected the once widely held belief that once children were committed to state care mothering ceased. Women’s 1. This chapter comes from a larger oral history project documenting the history of Kew Cottages in living memory (Manning 2008). Primary evidence emanates from over one hundred hours of oral history interviews and written accounts obtained from a range of people associated with the institution, including families, staff, residents, and volunteers . Research methodology incorporates techniques pioneered by academics in the field of oral history and inclusive intellectual disability research from the United States and United Kingdom (Atkinson 2004; Atkinson, Jackson, and Walmsley 1997b; Atkinson et al. 2000; Atkinson et al. 2005; Bogdan and Taylor 1976; Perks and Thomson 2006; Walmsley 2006; Walmsley and Johnson 2003). Theories emerging from research areas on mothering, gender, disability, and oral history have formed the basis of qualitative analysis (Barnes and Mercer 2003; Cocks et al. 1996; Coleborne and MacKinnon 2003; Goggin and Newell 2005; Johnson and Traustadóttir 2005; Longmore and Umanski 2001; Rapley 2004; Read 2000; Shakespeare, Gillespie-Sells, and Davies 1996). 184 • Corinne Manning voices in this study counter this misconception and provide an emotional and raw insight into disability and mothering. Established in 1887, Kew Cottages was Australia’s oldest and largest specialized institution for people with intellectual disability. The history of mothers’ activism at the institution reveals that a radical transformation in the perception of disability and mothering occurred across the period 1953–2008. For most of Kew’s existence, mothers were not encouraged to be active in their children’s care—this was believed to be the responsibility of staff and female working residents. Mothers were frequently told to surrender their children into state facilities and simply to “forget” about them. However, from the 1950s on, reforms in Australia’s mental-health service resulted in the emergence of formalized avenues of parental activism within the Cottages, and a significant shift in mothering began, with mothers acting as agents of change, as they increasingly adopted roles as advocates, volunteers, and lobbyists and worked alongside staff to raise the standard of care for residents. Australia’s first purpose-built institution for people diagnosed with what is now referred to as intellectual disability, Kew was regarded as a world-leading facility when it opened in 1887. It offered both residential care and educational opportunities at a site isolated on a hillside in a leafy suburb, approximately eight kilometers from the city of Melbourne, in the state of Victoria. Although Kew Cottages was established as a children’s institution, from the outset adults also resided there. In its first year of operation, 40 males and 17 females lived in the new facility with 40 percent of residents being aged 15 years or above. By 1968, when the population peaked at 948, Kew Cottages had grown to be Australia’s largest institution for people with intellectual disability. Kew Cottages was constructed adjacent to Kew Lunatic Asylum—an infamous institution for people experiencing mental illness. Until 1962, residents were committed to the Cottages under government legislation that applied to both people experiencing mental illness and people with intellectual disability. This system required two doctors to certify an individual as being of “unsound mind” and in need of custodial state care. For many mothers, committing an adult into such a notorious institution From Surrender to Activism • 185 was difficult enough; surrendering a child proved almost unbearable. The trauma experienced by many mothers was intensified by the regulation that their children be certified “insane” before their placement at Kew. In 1959, the Mental Health Act streamlined two distinct processes regarding the provision of state care for people with intellectual disability and those experiencing mental illness. According to Kew’s psychiatrist superintendent , Wilfrid Brady (1963, 345), when this legislation became operative and residents could be voluntarily...