Collegiality, ownership and control by members characterized groups. They gave members opportunities for paid or voluntary work, skill development and friendship which contributed to their confidence and engagement with life. Possibilities for new more positive identities such as being an expert, a business-like person, a self-advocate and an independent person were opened up. Self-advocacy is an important means of furthering social inclusion of people with intellectual disability.
BackgroundLittle progress has been made towards community participation of people with intellectual disability despite it being a policy aim since the 1980s. We aimed to identify the features of programmes designed to support community participation.MethodA scoping review was conducted of peer‐reviewed literature between 2000 and 2015, about interventions to support community participation for adults with intellectual disability.ResultsA small body of evidence relates to the design and effectiveness of interventions to enhance community participation. Seventeen studies reported programmes reflecting three conceptualizations of community participation (as social relationships, as convivial encounter and as belonging) that used strategies such as active mentoring, facilitative support worker practice and arts‐based programmes.ConclusionsStudies showed the diverse and person‐centred nature of community participation and demonstrated the need for larger‐scale studies of promising interventions that include details of costs, and strategies to guide implementation of policies to support community participation.
Background: "Convivial encounter" provides a new lens for understanding social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities, characterised by shared activity and friendly interactions with strangers without intellectual disabilities. Places, props and support practices facilitate incidental convivial encounters. This study explored processes for deliberately creating opportunities for such encounters. Methods: A case study design used mixed methods to collect data from two disability organisations about convivial encounters the people they supported experienced and staff practices that created these. Results: Most commonly convivial encounters created involved repeated moments of shared activity through which people became known by name by others without disabilities. Eight approaches and five processes were used to create these opportunities for encounter. Conclusions: The study provides a blueprint for scaling up or creating interventions to create opportunities for convivial encounters, and opens lines of enquiry about staff competences needed and parameters for costing this type of intervention.
Empowering people with intellectual disabilities to challenge stigma is complex. In many countries, decades of social policy designed to promote equal rights and enhance social inclusion have failed to generate the social conditions or the types of support arrangements necessary for people with intellectual disabilities to lead self-determined lives. Their deeply stigmatised social identities are difficult to manage and the disability rights movement has often not welcomed their participation, leaving individuals with few options to challenge negative perceptions. Self-advocacy groups offer distinct social spaces that enable people with intellectual disability to develop more positive social identities and engage in 'subtle radicalism' that challenges stigma.Many people with intellectual disabilities remain on the social and economic margins of society, in our country Australia as much as elsewhere; living in a 'distinct social space' made up of family, paid staff and other people with disabilities, without employment or engagement in meaningful activities or social relationships (Clement & Bigby, 2010; Productivity Commission, 2012). More than three decades of social policies promoting equal rights and social inclusion have failed to generate the social conditions or deliver the individual support necessary to enable people with intellectual disabilities to lead full lives of their own design. Disability discrimination legislation, for example, has achieved far more for people with physical and sensory disabilities than those with intellectual disability. Having an
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.