PEOPLE with learning disabilities, freed from the restraints of institutional life, have celebrated their new beginning.

Wigan Council this week threw a party for some of the 250 people who have found independence after been resettled into the community in the past decade.

For many of them years of their lives had been spent behind hospital walls.

The council's resettlement programme involved the closure of a number of the long stay hospitals which had previously cared for people with learning disability.

The work of arranging appropriate accommodation and continuing care was completed in December.

Groups have been resettled into supported housing in the community, with 24-hour care provided either by independent agencies or in-house services.

The programme has involved the social services department and a wide range of health related agencies, working in partnership with the Regional Health Authority and hospitals, to ensure that the change was completed successfully and sensitively both for the service users and the communities in which they went to live.

The celebration party brought together over 100 of the former patients and representatives of the agencies.

Chairman of social services, Cllr Alan Stephenson, said: "In days gone by it used to be thought that many people with a learning disability would not be capable of supporting an independent life in the community.

"For this reason many people, often for most inadequate reasons, were locked away sometimes far away from their families.

"Thankfully times have changed, and although the resettlement programme has taken a great deal of effort and commitment to achieve, we can now be proud and happy that all these people are now able to enjoy a truly new beginning.

"We should recognise that it could not have been achieved without a successful partnership approach by many different agencies. Our party was to celebrate that fact."

GUESTS celebrate at the 'new life' party during the week.

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