Access to club sports is still not a given for children with ID. Parents and children report numerous structural and social barriers to accessing mainstream sports. Sports clubs, on the other hand, want to include this group of people, but often do not know how to do it. Using a community-based approach, children with intellectual disabilities (8–15 years) and their parents were given the opportunity to participate in an 8-week sports program in four mainstream clubs organized by a self-help organization for people with intellectual disabilities. Focus groups were conducted with all participants (parents, children, and club representatives) before and after the program and evaluated by means of a thematic analysis. The children rated participation very positively and only very occasionally reported that they had been excluded. The parents confirmed this experience, but were nevertheless more critical in their assessment. Outside the research context of this study, the sports clubs hardly provided good support, which can also be deduced from previous negative experiences of the parents. The sports clubs themselves received valuable information about what their failings were: sufficiently available and qualified staff, better access to sports facilities, and a wider range of inclusive groups are needed. On the other hand, there was hardly any prejudice on the part of the non-disabled club members towards the new members with ID, which was evaluated extremely positively, albeit surprisingly, by the sports clubs.

Including people with intellectual disability in sport is a challenge for coaches and particularly the inclusion of these players alongside non-disabled peers. Drawing initially on the experiences of 47 coaches recruited through Special Olympics, a self-completed assessment tool was devised that can be used to evaluate the promotion of social inclusion within sport teams and the wider community. The emerging tool was field-tested with 389 coaches in the USA and seven European countries. The resulting 13 or 20 item scale had commendable psychometric properties both in terms of internal and test-retest reliability with evidence also for its ecological and predictive validity. As well as its use as a self-assessment tool within training courses for coaches, it also opens research opportunities into the relationship between this measure of inclusion and outcomes for both the coaches and for the players.

Sport has been promoted as a means of increasing the social inclusion of persons with intellectual disabilities. Suitable tools for evaluating this claim are not readily available. The aim of this study was to develop a self-report tool for use by people with intellectual disabilities regarding the social inclusion they experience in sport and in the community. A three-phase process was used. In the first phase an item bank of questionnaire items was created and field-tested with 111 participants. Initial factor analysis identified 42 items which were further evaluated in Phase 2 with 941 participants from six European countries. Construct validity was established first through Exploratory and then Confirmatory factor analysis. These analyses identified ten items relating to inclusion in sports and ten to inclusion in local communities. A third phase checked the usability and test-retest reliability of the short form with a further 228 participants. In all, 1280 athletes and non-disabled partners were involved from eight countries. This short social inclusion questionnaire has been shown to be a reliable and valid measure for use transnationally. Further psychometric properties remain to be tested; notably its sensitivity to change resulting from interventions aimed at promoting social inclusion.

People with intellectual disability lack opportunities to engage in sports, although the benefits of doing so may be even greater for them. One option is to encourage their inclusion in mainstream sports clubs that exist in nearly all European communities. Although there is a growing knowledge base within organisations such as Special Olympics in adjusting sports to meet the needs of people with intellectual disability, inclusion in community clubs raises additional challenges. This exploratory study aimed to garner the experiences of coaches alongside those of clubs members—with and without disabilities—in 12 community sports clubs in three European countries. In all 20 coaches and 51 members took part in semi-structured interviews. A thematic content analysis was used to devise a conceptual model describing an inclusive sports club. The overarching theme was that inclusive clubs require an ongoing balancing between a focus on sporting skills and performance, with managing the needs and characteristics of the players and the inter-relationships among them. Six subthemes were identified that described the core strategies to the effective functioning of the clubs. However, the vision and commitment of coaches was crucial and their recruitment was the main challenge the clubs faced. In addition, new opportunities for training coaches are needed to support the extension of inclusive clubs across a range of sports and locations. Continuing research could usefully identify the benefits to club members and identify sport-specific adaptations required to make clubs more fully inclusive.

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