{"product_id":"shut-away-when-down-syndrome-was-a-life-sentence-9781773100982","title":"Shut Away: When Down Syndrome Was a Life Sentence","description":"\u003cp\u003e • Author(s): Catherine McKercher\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher: Goose Lane Editions\u003cbr\u003e • Publisher Imprint: Goose Lane Editions\u003cbr\u003e • BISAC: People with Disabilities\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003cb\u003eAn explosive book that exposes the abuses of institutionalization.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\"How many brothers and sisters do you have?\" It was one of the first questions kids asked each other when Catherine McKercher was a child. She never knew how to answer it.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThree of the McKercher children lived at home. The fourth, her youngest brother, Bill, did not. Bill was born with Down syndrome. When he was two and a half, his parents took him to the Ontario Hospital School in Smiths Falls and left him there. Like thousands of other families, they exiled a child with disabilities from home, family, and community.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe rupture in her family always troubled McKercher. Following Bill's death in 1995, and after the sprawling institution where he lived had closed, she applied for a copy of Bill's resident file. What she found shocked her.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDrawing on primary documents and extensive interviews, McKercher reconstructs Bill's story and explores the clinical and public debates about institutionalization: the pressure to \"shut away\" children with disabilities, the institutions that overlooked and sometimes condoned neglect and abuse, and the people who exposed these failures and championed a different approach.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Goose Lane Editions","offers":[{"title":"Paperback","offer_id":47573582020759,"sku":"9781773100982","price":1605.0,"currency_code":"INR","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0666\/3471\/1191\/files\/9781773100982.webp?v=1774893231","url":"https:\/\/atlanticbooks.com\/products\/shut-away-when-down-syndrome-was-a-life-sentence-9781773100982","provider":"Atlantic Books","version":"1.0","type":"link"}