Unified Sports does provide a vehicle for promoting the social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities that is theoretically credible in terms of social capital scholarship and which contains lessons for advancing social inclusion in other contexts. Nonetheless, certain limitations are identified that require further consideration to enhance athletes' social inclusion in the wider community.

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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.

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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.