How Did Dorothea Dix Treat Children With Disabilities

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(ADD) Students with disabilities are not educated and integrated into classes to the fullest extent possible.
Individuals with disabilities did not come into mainstream culture until Dorothea Dix. Throughout the mid 1800’s, Dorothea Dix began to advocate for reforming the treatment of people with mental illness and disabilities. She began to tour many institutions where disabled people were living and documented many the cases of abuse and neglect. She then went on to advocate for laws that could improve the conditions and treatment of people with disabilities in hospitals and other facilities, but even this did not totally resolve the condition ("Dorothea Dix Begins to Advocate for Social Reforms in 1841."). The mistreatment of disabled people was rampant throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century. For instance, in 1967, almost 200,000 people with significant disabilities found home in state institutions. Many of these restrictive settings provided only minimal food, clothing, and shelter. Too …show more content…

There were almost one million children who were excluded from getting education and many children who had only limited access to materials. In response to this concern, Congress passed Public Law 94-142 in 1975, named the Education for All Handicapped Children Act (EHA). This law said that all children with disabilities would, “have a right to education, and to establish a process by which State and local educational agencies may be held accountable for providing educational services for all handicapped children.” This law also assured that children with disabilities have a free appropriate public education and provided assistance to States to provide for this education("Archived: 25 Year History of the IDEA."). This law was eventually changed, modified and amended was amended in 1997. It is now known as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act

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