“She's been involved in everything as far as I can see”: Supporting the active participation of people with intellectual disability in community groups

Abstract

Background The social processes that operate in community groups need to be better understood if people with intellectual disability are to be included in such groups. This study aimed to identify the nature and impact of the group processes on the active participation of people with intellectual disability.

Method Extensive field notes were taken during 2 years of participant observation whereby 5 people with a moderate level of impairment were supported to participate as individuals in community groups for periods of 5 to 10 months. Analysis used a critical realist approach.

Results Active participation was influenced by the interaction of 5 key social processes: leadership response, characteristics of the participants with intellectual disability, access to expertise, the presence of an integrating activity, and dealing with the difference dilemma.

Conclusions By revealing these processes, the study identified a number of interventions and ways of approaching community groups that have the potential to increase the extent to which people with moderate levels of impairment become active participants.

Keywords:

• social inclusion
• participation
• community groups
• contact theory
• moderate intellectual disability

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful for the financial contribution of the Australian Research Council to this research.

Conflicts of interest: None.

Funding

This research was supported under the Australian Research Council's Linkage Projects scheme (Project number: LP0989241) and with the assistance of two industry partners. The views expressed herein are those of the authors and are not necessarily those of the Australian Research Council or the industry partners. No restrictions have been placed on free access to or publication of the research data.

Notes

1 The names of all participants, organisations, and individuals have been changed. Some details of organisations have been disguised in the interests of reducing identifiability.

2 Mentors were trained in the principles of person-centred active support (Mansell et al., 2004) and were used more extensively in the companion study of people with mild intellectual disability and community groups (Bigby et al., 2014). Because of the presence in this study of the first author as participant observer, training of mentors was not a formal process but one of providing contextually based interpretation of behaviours and provision of information, as the need arose.