Ongoing voices of isolation and marginalisation of people with intellectual disabilities supported in different kinds of programs: the “cocoon of impossibility”

ABSTRACT

This article examines how different kinds of narratives have shared similar language, images, and concepts of segregation as they have been voiced by people with intellectual disabilities throughout a half-century of support models that have been posited as radically different. Although support ideologies have moved from institutionalisation to segregation to community inclusion, the stories of people with intellectual disabilities have shared overlapping perspectives on how segregation has continued to be experienced and are hauntingly the same. Further, there is evidence that these voices have seldom been attended to, as hard-won published stories and autobiographies, and the documents of inclusive research have rarely been used as primary sources.

KEYWORDS:

• Intellectual disability
• inclusion
• marginalisation
• self-advocacy
• rhizoanalysis
• social constructionism
• narratives
• story
• voice
• segregation
• program models

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.