Constructing An Indicator Framework For Social Inclusion Of People With Intellectual Disability

Social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities (ID), as a global trend in the 21st century, has got more attention from our community with the ever-increasing levels of social civilization. Effective assessment system for social inclusion will be helpful to make appropriate placement decision according to social-economic state, employment, education, life arrangement and all the other aspects about people with ID.The aim of this research was to construct a primary theoretical structure of indicator framework for further assessment on social inclusion of ID people. The subjects included 196 intellectually disabled people,1091 families and 204 staff from Shanghai Sunshine Home. After literature review, data were collected from questionnaires and then analyzed by statistical tools like descriptive statistics, factor analysis and correlation analysis. Based on current theories and indicator systems about social inclusion built by western developed countries, three kinds of framework, objective indicators, subjective indicators and integrated indicators, were examined respectively to explore the attitudes of people with ID and other two groups that they are dependent on about the assessment items of social inclusion evaluation.The results showed as following:1) In the mind of parents, an indicator framework of social inclusion for people with intellectual disabilities should include the following target areas:social interaction, material well-being, health concerns, employment, personal ability, initiative, rights protection, emotional experience, daily life, income gaps and social background.2) Assessment about social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities should be based on the principle of integrating subjective and objective indicators, but it could not be the case when it is necessary to employ the objective or subjective indicators system in practice.3) As the feeling of ID individuals about their social inclusion were more comprehensive, detailed and sensitive than their parents and stuff working in Sunshine Home, their views, attitudes and feeling should also be taken into account during the assessment.4) There were growing concerns about rights protection of ID people among parents and other relevant groups. It is recommended to take measures for popularization of basic legal awareness and self-protection knowledge. 5) Parents pay more attention to the economic, employment and health security of their ID children while the attitude of people with ID about employment was poor. So it is necessary to help them enjoy their work and thus raise their enthusiasm.Based on the sample of Shanghai Sunshine Home, this research constructed an initiative assessment indicator framework including objective and subjective indicators for social inclusion of people with ID, which probably provide theoretical and empirical support for the future research and practice.