REHAB 1949-1999
Origin
In November 1949 a small group of mainly recovering TB patients founded what is today known as the Rehab Group to help survivors of the epidemic regain their independence after their medical treatment was completed.
This was a radical undertaking in post Emergency Ireland. The notion that victims of TB, or anybody else with a disability, could make a meaningful contribution to the social and economic life of the nation had never been taken seriously.
With mass unemployment and enforced emigration among healthy workers, few could see the point of trying to create jobs for people who, according to the conventional wisdom, were incapable of real work.
In this climate the new organisation, established by Jack McDowell and Frank Cahill as the Central Committee for the Rehabilitation of the Tuberculous, received a hostile reception from State officials - even though the Minister for Public Health and Local Government, Noel Browne, was directly responsible for its existence.
Before he took office Browne had established a committee to raise the £250,000 cost of a new sanatorium for Dublin in response to the State's failure to tackle the TB epidemic which was claiming 4,000 lives a year in Ireland.
But on his appointment as a Clann na Poblachta Minister in the first Inter-Party Government in 1948, Browne used State funds to build a vast network of new sanatoria, including a facility serving Dublin.
Instead he asked the committee to help re-integrate former TB patients into society after they were discharged from the sanatoria. Their response was to develop a revolutionary concept - rehabilitation through training for work.
First Workshops
In its earliest incarnation the full extent of what today is a Group with some 100 centres on both sides of the Irish Sea was contained within the upper storey of a terraced house in south city Dublin.
With just a few hundred pounds that had been raised from the Dublin public, the organisation opened its first workshop in rented rooms on Pleasants Street just before Christmas in 1949.
It was a humble beginning. At first the new facility could only accommodate a maximum of 10 young women for training in the rudiments of the sewing trade.
Despite his role in the formation of the organisation, Noel Browne had ruled out any possibility of State funding for the workshop plan - a situation that remained unchanged until the 1960s.
This restricted the scale of the services that could be provided, but it also laid the foundation for the development of a fiercely independent, non-political and non-sectarian ethos that remains intact within Rehab today.
Throughout its early days the organisation, which was eventually re-named as the Rehab Institute, was also dogged by red tape and ignorance.
Public servants attempted to close down the early workshops on health grounds and companies refused to hire the trainees amid unfounded fears that they might spread the TB infection among their workers.
But the Institute kept growing. The launch of a football pools competition in 1952 as Ireland's first nationwide lottery operation gave the organisation the financial muscle to open new facilities in Dublin and to broaden its horizons beyond the capital with the launch of workshops in Cork and Limerick.
Disability
In 1957 the Institute took the momentous decision to open the doors of its workshops to people with disabilities other than those infected with TB.
By now the wonder drug Streptomycin had virtually eliminated Ireland's TB epidemic although huge numbers of ex-patients still required training services to gain entry to the workforce.
But when an inquiry was made about the possibility of psychiatric patients from St Patrick's Hospital in Dublin entering the workshops, the Institute responded positively.
Initially, just a handful of patients joined the training programmes. Most in the medical establishment believed it was folly to expect such people to participate in the workforce.
Moreover, they feared the Institute's robust approach to training in an environment that replicated the demands of the workplace might do more harm than good for people they felt needed sympathy, not hard work.
But they were forced to eat their words. This model would eventually become the bedrock for the development of vocational rehabilitation, not just in Rehab, but throughout most of Europe.
Years later it was accepted as the best system to provide training for people with disabilities in large numbers. But in the mid-1950s it was way ahead of its time.
The new recruits were an almost instant success, however. By the end of the year their ability to complete the training programme and take up jobs had prompted the Institute to open up the workshops to people with any type of disability.
Even by the beginning of the 1960s the organisation was still only catering for a fraction of the thousands of people with disabilities throughout the country who were willing and able to work.
New residential facilities had been opened in Kildare and Longford, but otherwise the Institute's plan to develop a nationwide network of centres had advanced no further.
It responded by declaring 1961 to be Disabled Person's Year primarily as a vehicle to launch a staggering £250,000 fundraising drive that would pay for new facilities in every county.
In financial terms Disabled Person's Year was a failure and only a handful of new centres were built. But the campaign also resulted in local committees made up of thousands of volunteers being established in virtually every town in Ireland.
It was this voluntary structure, along with a massive new source of funding after Ireland's accession to the EEC, that enabled the Institute to finally achieve its objective of providing training services for people with disabilities countrywide.
New Era
Over the last two decades Rehab has been transformed into one of Europe's biggest and most influential disability organisations.
World class facilities have been put in place throughout Ireland and the UK along with systems and methods of training that are often mimicked across Europe.
Today, the organisation's tentacles spread as far as Kenya where micro enterprises supported by Rehab Co-operation Africa have benefited thousands of women and South Africa where education projects are provided for Sowetan schoolchildren.
The launch of lottery operations in Britain enabled the setting up of Momentum in 1990 and Rehab UK in 1994 which now provide many successful services including state-of-the-art brain injury vocational centres.
In 1996, Rehab acquired the Training and Business Group which now provides training and employment services for more than 10,000 people each year.
Meanwhile rapid growth in Ireland prompted a major restructuring of the organisation. As a result, the National Training and Development Institute (National Learning Network), Rehab Enterprises, RehabCare and Rehab Foundation emerged as the major home divisions of the re-titled Rehab Group.
Promoting Equality
Since its inception Rehab has been at the forefront of the campaign to give disability its rightful place on the national agenda. Some battles have been won - but the struggle rages on.
In many ways, little has changed since the organisation was established, largely by people with disabilities recovering from TB, in the face of both apathy and, at times, downright hostility in the corridors of power.
Even now, there remains a widespread view among the planners of our economy and the controllers of our manpower that people with disabilities have no significant role in generating wealth in Ireland - that they are solely consumers of the social services.
As early as the 1950s, Rehab was seeking the adoption of pro-disability employment policies by State bodies - at one stage urging the introduction of a two per cent quota.
It lobbied for the introduction of realistic State payments to those whose disability prevented them from working, along with measures to increase access for people with disabilities to public transport and public buildings.
While some hard-earned concessions have been achieved on all of these issues - they each remain far from being resolved. Even our tiger economy has failed to resolve mass unemployment among people with disabilities who are able and willing to contribute to Ireland's economic success.
Today, there is a growing recognition that no single organisation can effect real change - that a broad coalition of all stakeholders in the disability sector is needed. The formation of such an alliance is now a major focus of Rehab's contribution to the disability rights campaign.
The experience of the last 50 years provides a stark reminder that change will not come easily, but it also shows that with the unconquerable determination that has marked the development of Rehab to date - anything becomes possible.
For further information contact the Rehab Group Communications Department, Beach Road, Sandymount.
Email: dara.duffy@rehab.ie|
