John and Colin both aged 20 lived with their parents. Martha aged 35 lived mainly on
her own in her large flat where her boy friend sometimes stayed, Peter aged 43 and
Philip aged 40 lived in a house with two women with learning difficulties which their
parents bought for all of them 14 years previously. They were very conscious of being
taped, and of making sense of interactions. For example, when Peter coughed he
looked concerned about the noise this would make on the tape, and later Philip gently
corrected my mistake.
Peter: We do drama now you see, that’s why, well Id, that’s a short title.
Interviewer: That’s the one you’re doing now, It?
Peter: Yes.
Philip [politely spells] I. D.
Int: Oh, id, like in Latin?
Peter: That’s right.
The three older ones cooked and did their own housekeeping. Martha also cooked for
her boyfriend, who has diabetes; she laughed when she said his diet helped to keep
her weight down. Martha had a notice “please take off your shoes” outside her flat,
“because why should I clean up after people? I’ve got better things to do.” Like Peter
and Philip, she checked the spy hole before opening the front door.
Education and employment
They were all literate and numerate. Colin was pleased to “be the first one” who
attended a special learning unit at his local mainstream school and Martha’s mother
“fought” for her to be able to leave special school and attend mainstream school,
where she was very happy until the head teacher she liked left.
Int: So your mum had a row?
Martha: It wasn=t a row, it was a fight. She had to fight for my rights you see. [The new head
teacher had said] AWhat is this mongol person doing in my school?@ I was there for five
years, five years, and she said that!
Int: So what did your mum say?
Martha: Well, what did she say to her? My mum went to the high court straight away. Of
course. The high court of justice! [The fight was to be able to stay in a mainstream school]
Because the special school didn=t do me any good at all basically.
Martha had GCSEs (school leaving exams) in French, drama and housecraft. In
inclusive mainstream schools it is usual for pupils with Down’s syndrome to take
GCSE courses, and some are bilingual when their families are (Alderson and Goodey,
1998). With his brother who was at university, John used “to run a local youth club,
we had to do the tidying up, 50p to get in. We used to play games, pool, snooker, and
we played music on grandad’s radio. They didn’t have music, so we took the radio
over to the youth club.” John was at further education college.
This year I’ll be on NVQ level. I’ve taken six computer exams....I want to go into
management. I’m on work placement two days a week, folding leaflets, typing,
photocopying, sending post. I am trying to broaden out a bit, into the computer programme,
computer analyst stage. I’ll look in the local paper and the high street usually, to see what
[jobs] they’ve got.