Landscapes of Care: Comparative Perspectives on Family Caregiving by Andrew Power

Author:Andrew Power [Power, Andrew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Public Policy, Political Science, Social Services & Welfare
ISBN: 9781317108092
Google: 6tsFDAAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29999102
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2010-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Irish Partition (1922-1944)

After the establishment of the Free State (1922), there was little development in social welfare for people with intellectual disabilities or their families. The Irish welfare system, having inherited the Poor Law, catered exclusively for the poor. The early 1920s saw the abolition of Poor Law unions across Ireland (with the initial exception of Dublin) and the closure of workhouses to reduce costs (National Archives of Ireland, 2004). Unfortunately, in the early period after Ireland established the Free State, the British Royal Commission on Lunacy and Mental Disorder (1926) had recommended a community service instead of detention for the ‘mentally retarded’ based on the treatment of patients in their own homes wherever possible (Warren, 2003). From the period of independence however, Ireland developed their own separate policy from England on the care of those with intellectual disabilities and their families.

The Irish State on its foundation was influenced by the specific social class and gender construction of Irish society and by ideological factors, in particular, the role of the Roman Catholic Church (the Church). In 1929, for example, the government reinforced the male breadwinner assumption of women’s dependency by providing that a woman’s membership of the insurance scheme terminated on marriage (McLaughlin, 1993). It was clear that the State was reliant on the Church for both political support and for welfare and education provision. A 1931 Papal Encyclical2 Quadragesimo Anno espoused the principle of ‘subsidiarity’ as a means of circumscribing state encroachment on voluntary welfare and charity arrangements within the parish or local community (Grogan, 1978). This principle was broadly accepted by government, which meant the state would have a functional role of ensuring social order, however, it would refrain from intervening in economic and social affairs unless the national interest or social equilibrium was threatened. The Encyclical stated that: ‘It is an injustice and at the same time a great evil and disturbance of right order to assign to a greater and higher association what lesser and subordinate organisations can do’. The Church was able to capitalise upon the aspirations for Irish nationhood due to the high rates of Roman Catholic followers. According to McLaughlin (1993) the Church provided the institutional links between the new political, economic and social elites and the masses. The religious-based organisations tended to emphasise charitable principles and the duty of the rich to help the needy. People with disabilities and their families had to therefore depend on being supported by ad hoc voluntary groups and underfunded charities. With high mortality rates more generally, due to heart disease, tuberculosis and cancer, very few people with intellectual disabilities lived until adulthood (Muckross Research Library, no date).

As a consequence of the Church’s dominant position, according to Inglis ‘secular civility became synonymous with Catholic morality’ (1987: 165). This culminated in notions of Catholic teachings being enshrined in Article 41.2 of the 1937 Constitution, a document drawn up by both the government of the time (Fianna Fáil) and the Church in which the family was recognised as the

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