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Leonard Cheshire and his work
A Cheshire Home should be a place of shelter physically and of encouragement spiritually; a place in which the residents can acquire a sense of belonging and of ownership by contributing in any way within their capabilities to its functioning and development; a place to share with others and from which to help others less fortunate; and a place in which to gain confidence and develop independence and interests; a place of hopeful endeavour, not of passive disinterest.
" give each individual person the greatest possible choice as regards all aspects of living." " everything possible should be done to help the person concerned achieve maximum independence." "the goal should be defined as freedom to choose." Leonard Cheshire (in The Hidden World, 1981)
Comments on Leonard Cheshire's life and work 'He has done more good for more people than anyone else in the country' Lord Denning 'I ran into him briefly a few times...His modesty, simplicity and sheer ordinariness were awe-inspiring; he also had a quiet charm.' Alec Guinness
'Crossing the Finishing Line' Last thoughts of Leonard Cheshire VC "As you advance into this disease (motor neurone) you feel your body getting weaker. Youn can do much less physically. You also find yourself carrying this tremendous weight of tiredness, so that it's an enormous effort to get started. Now, this fact makes me think of two things. Firstly, the most fundamental of all, the really important thing for us to do, is to empty ourselves, to encourage self-emptying. A Jesuit will talk about it as self-surrender. But, it is the emptying of everything self-centred, even if it is a good thing. Your attachment to earthly things is dissolved so that God can fill you totally. If you read most of the theological books about our Lord you find that at the heart of it the writers are saying that his life consisted of total self-surrender, self-renunciation. So, that is my first point. As your bodily faculties go, so you can remind yourself that that is just what you should be doing internally. In a curious way it helps you. I used to have an addiction to coffee and I knew that I really was hooked on coffee. If anybody said that they thought I should cut it down, I found a good reason for not doing so. But now, coffee means nothing to me. Secondly, an insight from the life of St. Therese of Lisieux. Towards the end of her life she experienced a great tiredness because she had TB. She felt cold and weak. But every time she felt something like that she said: 'I'll offer it on behalf of a missionary somewhere who is too tired to make his next journey.' Now, that's a lovely thought and you can do that as well. You can say, 'I'm just lying in bed here and I can offer it for my wife or for anybody close to me, for members of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation or even somebody I don't know at all.' You feel you are being given a wonderful opportunity for giving, in a more constructive way than when you had your full faculties about you." June 1992
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In late 1948, Leonard Cheshire, bomber pilot and war hero, offered to help a dying former comrade, Arthur Dykes, by providing him with accommodation in a large house which Leonard Cheshire owned. Cheshire then cared for Arthur Dykes up until his death. From this modest beginning Leonard Cheshire went on to found an international network of organisations dedicated to helping people with disabilities live lives of their own choosing. The unique Cheshire ethos of service provision was later summed-up in the Singapore Declaration:
All Cheshire services in Ireland and worldwide aspire to operate in keeping with the Cheshire ethos and in line with to-day’s standards for rights-based disability services. In particular, Cheshire services aim to listen carefully to people with disabilities and to try to meet the expectations of people using our services. While change and innovation are essential to the ongoing development of services, certain underlying principles of Cheshire services still hold true: