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Through the Lanes of History -- Introduction to Jean Pettifor's "Reflections on Respect and Caring for Persons with Disabilities: My Sixty-One Years of Alberta History"
Aldred H. Neufeldt
On occasion we receive an accounting of a slice of history in the disability field that resonates beyond the local. The paper following is such a one. It addresses the critical question of what professionals and service providers believe is ethical - or 'good and right,' as the author says - in living with persons with disabilities. It is the text of an inaugural lecture in her name by Jean Pettifor.
Dr. Pettifor has been influential both in Canada and internationally in promoting the careful consideration of what constitutes ethical decision-making amongst professionals and service providers related to the field of disability. Her paper speaks to the changing orientation that has taken place over the more than 60 years of her involvement both as a clinical practitioner and as an advocate.
Her early observations are drawn from a specific locality - the Province of Alberta in Canada. With time, these have been added to by her involvement in shaping codes of ethics for professional groups across Canada (such as the Canadian Psychological Association and the Canadian Association of Rehabilitation Professionals), as well as a consultant and resource person to various international bodies.
If a province or a state can be said to have a personality, then Alberta's would be considered a 'split personality'. On the one hand, it has a history of fiscal and social conservatism. Example: It was one of two provinces in Canada, that embraced the international eugenics movement's arguments in the late 1920s by adopting and assiduously implementing a law on sexual sterilization of people with certain disabilities, a law that remained in force until 1972. On the other, it also has been characterized by social innovation. Example: It was one of the first jurisdictions in the world to provide individualized funding to people with disabilities to support personal control of the quality of services, and probably has the greatest experience of any jurisdiction in the world in this.
While many of Dr. Pettifor's observations are local, her work has resonance in any context where people with disabilities and professionals pursue changes in services or social systems or public policies that support equality of opportunity. They speak to how the caring of an individual professional can make a difference in small ways and large, to how important it was for partnerships to be forged between people with disabilities and professionals in order to transform ideological forces supporting residential institutions as the norm to the belief that all people should and could live meaningful lives in the community. Above all, her paper speaks to how the understanding of what is ethical and right has changed over time and what has remained unchanged.
Aldred H. Neufeldt
Editor, IJDCR
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