‘He Is, After All, a Young Man’: Claiming Ordinary Lives for Young Adults with Profound Intellectual Disabilities

Abstract

This paper discusses youth and the significance of age in the lives of persons with profound intellectual and multiple disabilities. The analysis is based on an ethnographic research project that explores what makes a good life for this group of people. The findings indicate that whilst the meaning and significance of youth and age were discussed often by care workers and family members, age had very little significance in the lives of our research participants. Youth as a phase of life gets lost in the transition from children’s services to adult services: age in the lives of persons with profound intellectual disabilities means merely a move from one service system to another. For the care workers, age provides a way to evaluate and criticize the service system and whether it caters for the individual needs of persons with profound intellectual disabilities.