**2. Attitudes towards the care of people with learning disabilities**

Over the years, perceptions towards disability have varied significantly from one community to another and traditional approaches to the care of people with learning disabilities have a rather tarnished history [6]. In this chapter, learning disability is categorized according to the international classification of diseases (ICD) [10] where it is classified as a condition of arrested or incomplete development of the mind, which is characterized by impairment of skills, and manifested during the developmental period, which contributes to the overall level of intelligence, i.e. cognitive, language, motor and social abilities [8].

When children who were labelled 'feeble minded' grew into adults, those who could no longer be taken care of in their own homes were put into asylums or workhouses [9]. Goffman [10] spoke of such institutional care as the tendency towards the absolute control of every aspect of a person's life and which led him to coin the term 'total institution'. This was a situation where people were totally cut off from the wider society for an appreciable period and all aspects of life were conducted in the same place in the immediate company of others and all within the same hierarchic and bureaucratic framework [10]. Similarly, King et al. [11] wrote on institutional care and described how it included block treatment, rigidity of routine, social distance and depersonalization. Goffman referred to living in such institutions as being stripped of one's identify kit [10].

For people with a learning disability, the situation was even worse because their experiences may only have been of institutional life and their '*identify kit'* may solely have consisted of institutional life and practices. It is very evident that these institutions failed to provide normal experiences for those with a learning disability.
