Normalization principle
making conditions of everyday living available to all people with disabilities
"The normalization principle means making available to all people with disabilities patterns of life and conditions of everyday living which are as close as possible to the regular circumstances and ways of life or society." Normalization is a rigorous theory of human services that can be applied to disability services. Normalization theory arose in the early 1970s, towards the end of the institutionalisation period in the US; it is one of the strongest and long lasting integration theories for people with severe disabilities.
Definition
Normalization involves the acceptance of some people with disabilities, with their disabilities, offering them the same conditions as are offered to other citizens. It involves an awareness of the normal rhythm of life – including the normal rhythm of a day, a week, a year, and the life-cycle itself (e.g., celebration of holidays; workday and weekends). It involves the normal conditions of life – housing, schooling, employment, exercise, recreation and freedom of choice previously denied to individuals with severe, profound, or significant disabilities.
Wolf Wolfensberger's definition is based on a concept of cultural normativeness: "Utilization of a means which are as culturally normative as possible, in order to establish and/or maintain personal behaviors and characteristics that are as culturally normative as possible." Thus, for example, "medical procedures" such as shock treatment or restraints are not just punitive, but also not "culturally normative" in society. His principle is based upon social and physical integration, which later became popularized, implemented and studied in services as community integration encompassing areas from work to recreation and living arrangement.
Theoretical foundations
This theory includes "the dignity of risk", rather than an emphasis on "protection" and is based upon the concept of integration in community life. The theory is one of the first to examine comprehensively both the individual and the service systems, similar to theories of human ecology which were competitive in the same period.
The theory undergirds the deinstitutionalization and community integration movements, and forms the legal basis for affirming rights to education, work, community living, medical care and citizenship.
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This entry incorporates text from “Normalization principle” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.