From left: Michelle Jarman, Erin Bush, Sandy Leotti and Jeremy Forbis, Administrator for WLRC in Lander, Wyo.
were reintegrated into communities across Wyoming decades ago. Today, the Wyoming Life Resource Center (WLRC) is undergoing another transformation, providing temporary residential health services to individuals with complex and significant needs. The new mission of the facility is to fill a gap in services for people who are not able to access appropriate supports in their communities. “Our research project seeks to investigate the long history of Wyoming Life Resource Center,” says Bush, “from the early decades as a state training school, through deinstitutionalization, to its current incarnation as a healthcare facility for people with significant disabilities and complex support needs. Through documenting the history of the institution as well as its current transformation, we aim to bring the history Filling a Gap in of deinstitutionalization to light through Developmental Disability Care archival research and contemporary oral histories.” “Through this project, our aim is to develop a partnership not only with the Three UW College of Health Sciences scholars, Erin Bush, WLRC, but with former residents, families, community Michelle Jarman, and Sandy Leotti, were awarded funds members, and other stakeholders in order to document a through The Equality State Research Network (ESRN) multilayered history of the institution and its connections to develop a partnership with the Wyoming Life Resource to residents, staff members, families, communities, and the Center (WLRC) in Lander. The WLRC, formerly named state of Wyoming,” says Bush. The first prong, being more the Wyoming State Training School, opened in 1912 to archival in nature, seeks to understand the institution and its provide residential care and education to people who would operations specifically prior to the 1970s. now be diagnosed with intellectual and developmental The second prong, focusing more the years leading up to disabilities. and following deinstitutionalization, will involve identifying Historically, state schools such as this became custodial people involved in the former state school who are in nature, where people were confined, often for decades interested in recounting oral histories. Using a community(or lifetimes) within the institution. Over the years, the based participatory approach to inform our historical Wyoming Life Resource Center has changed dramatically. research, we also will rely upon community participants In response to disability rights and advocacy efforts to identify local and statewide health, disability, and social resulting in deinstitutionalization, long-term residents integration issues relevant to this project, adds Bush.
WYOMING LIFE RESOURCE CENTER
UW Division of Communication Disorders
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