ABSTRACT
An aura of progressiveness and confidence that children with severe learning difficulties are being helped to reach their full potential is created and maintained by espousing normalisation, individual programme planning prescriptive teaching, social education and community participation in policy statements and short and long term plans for action. As a principle of action normalisation covers areas such as role expectancies, social imagery, participation and use of culturally valued means in order to enable people to be valued as community members. This involves a great deal more than increasing devalued persons' competencies and their ability to cope with more normal surroundings, or placing them in environments which look more normal to the outsider. Within their sphere of work teachers can also be legitimately active in terms of alerting parents to educational issues which have serious consequences for their sons and daughters, thereby helping parents to mobilise their own resources.
