Social Inclusion of Persons with Disabilities into Mainstream Society: Using the Community Care Context

Abstract

Social Inclusion is an important and extremely desirable phenomenon for persons with disabilities(PWDs). It is the gateway to creating the sense and opportunities for PWDs by recognizing being as integral and potential human resources and a responsible segment of society.  In addition to the lack of research and policies that have been formulated from time to time to emphasize the concept and importance of the Social Inclusion of PWDs’, the traditional response of the community towards PWDs has deterred the social inclusion of PWDs.  The basic theme of this research study was to explore the efforts made by community members for the social inclusion of PWDs in the Community Care context.  A qualitative research method was used to conduct the study. At first, the document -analysis of previous research studies was made to explore the efforts made by the Government and policymakers for the social inclusion of PWDs in the COVID-19 endemic scenario. The open-ended interviews were conducted with the 20 professionals related to special education and social welfare fields to explore the efforts made by the community stakeholders as an element of community care to deal with social restrictions for PWDs and foster their social inclusion to make them productive members of society. The content -analysis reflected that no significant effort has been made at the governmental level for the social inclusion of PWDs d. Finally, the study suggested two Social Inclusion models; 1) Personal Social Services Model (PSSM) and 2) the Social-Ecological Model (SEM) of Social Inclusion which deals with the Individual, Interpersonal, Organizational, Community, and Socio-Political Factors of Society.