ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the three themes. First, in the 1980s, Valerie offered an alternative and compelling perspective to the then dominant Social Role Valorisation (SRV) to explain the continuing rejection and devaluation of people with intellectual disabilities. SRV has been criticised as meaning people with learning disabilities need support in passing as "normal". Second, Valerie's view was that the ever-changing labels, and the bitter conversations accompanying these debates, are a means to hiding our discomfort about "learning disability". Third, Valerie's views on "death-making", in which she says, "The damaged child is written off as pre-born or pre-human and therefore the value of his or her life is under threat". This theme helps to better understand, both the continual depressing stories about people dying carelessly unheeded in the hands of health and social care services, and the reported practice of keeping families at arms' length.
