Patricia Farrell Patricia Farrell, who has died at the age of 89, exerted a major influence on the development of facilities for people with learning disabilities, particularly in the provision of daycare.
Her great achievement was to help provide an invaluable alternative for carers who, in the absence of daycare facilities, baulked at the prospect of placing children in institutions.
Back in the frugal 1950s the outlook was depressingly bleak, with relatively few residential beds available and little or no public funding for either respite or daycare. Against this background she emerged with a new vision and a new sense of hope for those with learning disabilities and their families.
The first half of the 20th century had seen only minimal improvement in the lot of sufferers and those who looked after them in the family home. Religious orders, such as the Sisters of Mercy, the Brothers of St John of God and the Brothers of Charity, were largely responsible for whatever residential care was available in the country, but the constraints on funding were such that few advances were made in other areas.
It meant that the pressure on parents and other family members was often intense and, with no public money available to alleviate the problem and no organisational structures in place to assist the voluntary element, the outlook was often grim to the point of being hopeless.
Patricia Farrell, whose son, Brian, suffered with Down's syndrome, eventually decided that the best help was self-help and in 1955 inserted a small advertisement in the Evening Herald, inviting others in her position to convene in Dublin and discuss their common problems.
Out of the resulting modest meeting in a basement at the premises of the Country Shop in Stephen's Green came the outline of the organisation we know today as St Michael's House, a non-denominational body which was the prototype for similar enterprises in other parts of Ireland.
Later in 1955, at a packed meeting in the Mansion House addressed by Declan Costello, the pressing nature of the need for a new deal for those with learning disabilities became clear. With Costello establishing the ethos of the new body, Barbara Stokes overseeing the medical imput and a handful of dedicated core voluntary workers working long into the night, Farrell saw her aspirations take root in a manner which may even have surpassed her own expectations.
With a teacher seconded from the Steiner movement in Austria, St Michael's House started with just three pupils in a room in the south Dublin home of Madge Atock, one of those who had responded to the advertisement. Today it provides a service for almost 1,500 people in 120 community-based centres in the greater Dublin area.
Initially seen primarily as a means of enabling hard-pressed carers to cope with the day-to-day problems of looking after loved ones at home, St Michael's charter quickly expanded to take account of their educational needs.
Long before her death, the woman who conceived the idea of the mentally challenged one day graduating from their sheltered environment into open education was able to reflect that, with a vast reservoir of goodwill in the outside world and the growing awareness of the State's role in tending the needs of some of the most vulnerable in our society, the dream had, indeed, been made possible.
A testimony to Patricia Farrell's humanitarianism is the reality that she laboured tirelessly to develop facilities in Dublin, despite the fact that, living in Gigginstown, Co Westmeath, she could never hope to avail of them for her son with special needs.
Born near Kells, Co Meath, of Ulster stock, she inherited a farm in Gigginstown from a family friend at the age of 17 and continued to farm there until she sold the property to Michael O'Leary some 10 years ago. She married John Farrell, and in addition to Brian is survived by two sons, John and Antony.
In time, the success story that was St Michael's House inspired others to raise the level of their ambition, and in 1972 Farrell would be a member of the board of directors which oversaw the foundation of Camphill, a largely rural-based organisation which now caters for some 300 children and adults in 12 centres.
Erskine Childers was minister for health at the time, and she would later recall the reservations harboured by two members of the Church of Ireland about the way the management of the school would be received by the Catholic Church. The advice they got was to push on regardless, and in the event it was shown to be eminently sound.
Apart from her tireless efforts as a fundraiser, she is recalled by those in charge of Camphill as a quiet, enormously generous woman who in summer opened the doors of her home to provide holidays for many with no immediate family ties.
Away from her life's consuming passion, Patricia Farrell bred horses on her farm and prided herself on the fact that one of them, Take Time, finished second in the 1959 Irish Grand National, and another found its way on to an American Olympic equestrian team.
Patricia Farrell (née Wilson): born November 8th, 1914; died July 9th, 2004