A personal story

My name is ********* and I worked at Royal Derwent from 1967 to 1978 and enjoyed my time in that position. It was sad at times but very rewarding as well. I know it makes us sad to think of the cruelty and sadness that took place in these dwellings. But as a mum of a 21 years old son who has Down syndrome I can understand the heartache of the parents that had to leave their loved ones in the hospital because they could not cope or did not know how to deal with their child’s disability.

Today we are so lucky, when my son was born I said to the Doctor what I am going to do and GOD bless his heart he said ********* take him home and love him. That is what we did and boy have we been rewarded, what a wonderful young man he has become. The love this man has brought to our home and the many values that we have learnt through him has been amazing. Wow we’ve been blessed.

But that did not happen for these mums and dads they were told to go home and leave them, told that their baby would never have any kind of life and they would never amount to anything. How very wrong the medical staff were. With lots of love and patience these beautiful people can make a difference.  We look at these derelict and rundown buildings and hear the terrible stories about the history of this hospital but we never hear about the positive things about it. We hear about the cruelty and yes in the early years there was a lot of negative behaviour.

My mum worked there for 33 years and at first she said it was tragic, they had just started to trial the drug Largactil (an anti-psychotic drug) because a lot of the clients were very violent and many staff got hurt, beds was straw on the floor these people did not have a good life but things did improve in lots of ways.

There were some cruel staff but in my time there were a great many good compassionate staff (men and women) that cared about the welfare of these vulnerable people.

There were always three hot meals a day, regular showers and baths always a bed to sleep in. There were also different forms of entertainment, they had their own picture theatre where they watched movies and put on plays to entertain each other. There were socials, annual balls, Christmas parties where they would enjoy getting dressed up, a swimming pool and lots of recreational things to do and shopping trips for clients who were able. A lot of capable clients went out on day trips and they had their own church to go to Sunday services. The clients had their own friendship groups and they always knew they had a home. What I am saying is there were lots of things going on that was not quite right but there were a lot of very good things as well.