Today, people with disabilities have many opportunities to live, work, and play in their communities. Community-based services, while certainly limited in many ways, are generally available and accessible to those people who are in need.
Families have choices in where and how their children with disabilities are supported and educated.
But this has not always been the case. To understand the present, one must know the history. The development of services for people with mental retardation and other disabilities in the United States had its early beginnings in 1848. Prior to that time, people with disabilities were generally kept at home with their families, with little or no outside support. An experimental school in Boston was one of the first attempts to formally educate people with mental retardation.