Integrated Living Communities Inc history

The first opportunity to become remotely involved in rehabilitation arose in 1934 when Switzer was appointed assistant to the Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in charge of the Public Health Service.

Laurie remembers 1949 as the year polio began hitting adults.

In 1950, it established 16 centers to serve 242 of these hard-hit polio survivors.

Then in 1953, the County conducted an attendant care survey.

Switzer's philosophy shaped the Vocational Rehabilitation Act of 1954, which poured funds into research and direct services.

Ultimately, until 1959 when they could no longer fund attendant care, local March of Dimes centers also gave monthly stipends of $300 to polio survivors, enabling them to live outside the hospital.

Inspired by the political activism of the 1960’s, these students began to see themselves not as patients but, in political terms, as an oppressed minority.

Their friendship prompted Switzer to say, "I'd like to get into this work if the chance ever comes" (Current Biography, January 1962, p.42).

The rise of the private nursing home industry begins this year and doubles to more than 500,000 by 1965.

In 1967, Switzer became commissioner of vocational rehabilitation.

In 1972, the first Center for Independent Living was established in Berkeley, California by Ed Roberts and the Rolling Quads.

In 1974, Wade founded the Atlantis Community, a model for community-based, consumer-controlled, independent living.

One of the many ironies of Ed’s life was that fourteen years later in 1975, Governor Jerry Brown appointed Ed as state Director of California’s rehabilitation agency, the same institution that once deemed him too severely disabled to ever work.

Before he could implement his economic dream, Roberts left CIL in 1976 to become director of the California Department of Rehabilitation.

Denied admission to public school because her wheelchair was "a fire hazard," she saw her parents fight that injustice for 4 years (Margold, 1981). Her first "victory" was switching from home instruction to a segregated health conservation class.