Check out these slides to learn more about the distinction between integration and inclusion of people with disabilities as well as the socio-spatial isolation that is perpetuated throughout systems and practice. How can we move beyond isolation and even integration and into inclusion?

1. The Construction of
Disability & Health:
Integration vs. Inclusion
Institutionalization and Isolation
APHA Disability Section
Chair’s Forum 2013

2. Integration vs. Inclusion
Mary Olson and Robert Liston

3. “…if the way that disabled
people are expected to get
into a building is round the
back, past the bins and
through the kitchens, what
does that message
communicate? How will it
make a disabled person
feel?”
~Napolitano, 1995
“Good inclusive design will
send positive messages to
disabled people, messages
which tell them: ‘you are
important’; ‘we want you
here’; and ‘welcome’…”
~Napolitano, 1995

4. Integration
• You can legislate integration and
accessibility- but not attitudes or
inclusion
• Barriers to inclusion
• Space is organized to perpetuate the
dominance of ‘able-bodied’ people

5. Inclusion
• A belief that communities are better when
representing all people.
• Being in the community vs. being part of the
community.
• Special Places
• Environments that exclude people with disabilities
are constructed

7. For Your Consideration
• What would a world of inclusion vs. integration look
like?
• How can we change landscape to facilitate
inclusion?

8. Institutionalization & Isolation
Mary Olson and Robert Liston

9. “An understanding of how disabled
people become marginalized and
excluded within society cannot be
understood without an appreciation of
the socio-spatial processes that
reproduce social relations .”
~Kitchin, 1998

10. Institutions as Exclusionary Spaces
• As a way to separate those who are
“deviant”
• Creation of institutions
• Types of Institutions across time
• Modern Definition: Places people live
without choice or as default

11. Socio-spatial Isolation
Historical interactions create culture
• Where do people belong?
• Where can people’s needs be met?
What spaces teach us
• Out of sight, out of mind
• “Othering”, difference is “bad”
• Culturally reinforcing
• Perceptions of where people with disabilities fit &
how they belong

12. The Role of Systems
State Sponsored Isolations
• Institutional bias in Medicaid’s long-term care
• Economic benefit to communities
Possibilities
• Money Follows the Person
• Community First Choice Option

13. For Your Consideration
How do isolation and institutionalization influence:
– How we perceive people with disabilities?
– How we run our services?
– How we build our environments?