Content area
Full text
Introduction
The rights of people with intellectual disabilities to live an “ordinary life” have featured in government policy (e.g. DoH, 2001) and are enshrined in the 1998 Human Rights Act. Over the last 50 years, different parts of the UK have targeted large-scale deinstitutionalisation to varying degrees (DoH, 1971, 2001) with the ultimate aim of improving the lives and wellbeing of this population (Hatton, 2016). Since its inception, in England, Valuing People (DoH, 2001) set out the principles of person-centred support – offering the same choices, opportunities and rights as everyone else in their communities. This policy was set within a human rights framework and reflected the influence of values movements in this field including: self-determination (Wehmeyer and Schwartz, 1998); social role valorisation (Wolfensberger, 2013) and person-centred planning (Mansell and Beadle-Brown, 2004).
The Valuing People (DoH, 2001) policy included aims for employment, relationships and housing. At this time, very few people with intellectual disability (probably less than 10 per cent, according to DoH, 2001) were in paid employment and an increased target was set. Nearly 20 years on, there is continuing, strong English Government commitment to increasing the number of people with intellectual disability in paid work (Parkin et al., 2018); however, the reality is that employment rates remain low (Department of Work and Pensions and The Department of Health, 2017) and employment in the broadest sense is precarious for people with intellectual disability (Emerson et al., 2018).
Objectives were set to enable people with intellectual disability to live fulfilling lives which included developing relationships. The rights of people with intellectual disability to have relationships (World Health Organisation, 2006) are enshrined in UK law in the Human Rights Act (Human Rights Act, 1998), yet there has been little research into how many people are actually in relationships (Emerson et al., 2005) despite it being an important consideration for people with intellectual disability (Healy et al., 2009). While there is evidence that community-based structures of independent and supported living deliver better outcomes than institutions as long as they are appropriately set up and managed (Mansell et al., 2007), there remains a significant number of people with intellectual disabilities in institutional settings and/or residential care (Hatton, 2017).
In 2014, a UK-based intellectual...