Historical Roots and Impact of SRV The ideas that developed and coalesced to become Social Role Valorization theory emerged in the 1950s-1960s at a time of widespread disenchantment with congregate care settings for children and adults with intellectual impairments. Residential institutions in North America and western Europe were essentially custodial, of poor quality, even dehumanizing (Wolfensberger, 1969), and not a few were the subject of negative exposés in the popular press (Blatt B., & Kaplan, F., 1974). In his history of the principle of normalization, Wolfensberger (1999) recounts that though many were in agreement that the institution had to go, it was not at all clear what it should be replaced with. There was no available organising idea to direct the establishment of a new approach to serving people with disabilities. However, there were, here and there, attempts at change and innovation. Wolfensberger (1934-2011), while on a postdoctoral research fellowship in the early 1960s, visited cutting edge services in Germany, Switzerland, Belgium and parts of the UK and wrote up what he found (1964a-b; 1965). With the participation of many families of people with intellectual disabilities, Wolfensberger was also a leader in designing and setting up a new community service system in the state of Nebraska in the United States (Schalock, 2002), where many new service modalities were imported from Europe or were original in design. In 1969, Robert Kugel and Wolf Wolfensberger (1969) were asked to bring together a group of leaders in the field of disability to describe residential alternatives for people with cognitive impairments. “Changing Patterns in Residential Services” to which contributed a number of the leading lights of the era, included Bengt Nirje’s (1969) first systematic description of what he was first to call the “Normalization principle” and defined it as “making available to the mentally retarded patterns and conditions of everyday life which are as close as possible to the norms and patterns of the mainstream of society.” The book and Nirje’s chapter ended up becoming quite influential. More detailed histories of normalization are available (Lemay, 1995; Nirje, 1999; Wolfensberger, 1999). Wolfensberger further elaborated the principle of Normalization to apply to all groups of people at risk of marginalization (Wolfensberger 1970). His 1972 book on “The principle of Normalization for Human Services” was a best seller, however, the term “normalization” generated some controversy and many misconceptions (Wolfensberger, 1980). Also, Wolfensberger’s definition of it had evolved considerably with the “social role” concept becoming a key element (Wolfensberger and Tullman, 1982). In 1983, he suggested that the principle should be called something else and proposed the expression “Social Role Valorization” (SRV) as the name of a theory that reached beyond normalization. In line with his goal of defining it as a social science theory he evacuated much of the ideological content. SRV thus became a descriptive theory that elucidated how social roles were the mechanism through which devaluation or valorization was transacted, and later (Wolfensberger et al., 1996) that would emphasize how valued social roles opened up access to objective well-being or “the good things of life.” From the very beginning, Normalization and then SRV have been very influential (Flynn & Lemay, 1999), particularly in the English-Speaking World (Canada, the USA, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand). Twenty years after its publication the “The Principle of Normalization in Normalization (Heller et al. 1991) was judged to be the most influential text on intellectual disabilities of the past 50 years. The 1983 article unveiling Social Role Valorization (Wolfensberger, 1983) was judged the 17th most important work over the same period of time (Heller et al., 1991). The community-based service agency structure first developed in Nebraska has been widely replicated (Schalock, 2002). In 1994 the United Nation’s hosted a conference in Reykjavik, Iceland, titled “Beyond Normalization: Towards a Society for All” (Lemay, 1994a) to unveil the new “Standard Rules for the
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