Listening to People with Intellectual Disability about Institutions

Abstract

Despite the ongoing impacts worldwide of institutionalisation on people with intellectual disability, the public knows little about large-scale disability institutions that have been the focus during the late 20th century of deinstitutionalisation efforts (historic institutions) and the people who lived there. An interdisciplinary team of researchers (including those with intellectual disability) undertook research with people with intellectual disability to explore what and how the public should learn and remember historic institutions. The project found that people with intellectual disability support community engagement with histories and lived experiences of historic institutions, in order to repair past wrongs, end contemporary practices of institutionalisation, segregation, and exclusion, and realise transformative equality and inclusion. People with intellectual disability should lead these initiatives, with appropriate support in recognising the very live memories and traumas associated with them. This article provides a model of inclusive research for turning the harms of past institutionalisation into an educational and reparative experience.