Participative or dignified citizenship? An empirical ethical study of social inclusion for people with profound and multiple disabilities living in sheltered living institutions.

The Dutch ratification of the UN Convention on the rights of persons with disabilities put social inclusion high on the political agenda. The Convention defines social inclusion as ‘living independently and being included in the community’. However, this definition does not resonate with the daily life of people with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities (PIMD) residing in
sheltered living institutions, who often need care for almost every aspect of their lives and have limited capacity for verbal expression (Simplican et al., 2015). It is unclear what social inclusion should mean for people with PIMD and what people with PIMD want from social inclusion themselves. As a result, care professionals and relatives struggle to implement social inclusion in their daily practice. The idea of social inclusion thus actually threatens to exclude people with PIMD.

This project sets out to examine ways in which the notion of social inclusion can be conceptualized for and implemented into care practices for people with PIMD, taking their own appreciations into account. Implicitly, care practices for people with PIMD are driven by two opposed understandings of social inclusion, that articulate two opposing ethical ideals. On the one hand, social inclusion is understood as stimulating equality, but on the other hand, social inclusion is interpreted as accommodating difference.