Webinar October 8, 2025: Progress on deinstitutionalisation and community living скачать в хорошем качестве

Webinar October 8, 2025: Progress on deinstitutionalisation and community living

Since the 1970s, deinstitutionalisation has been a central component of policies and practices designed to help people with intellectual disabilities achieve a good life. A key feature of this has been avoiding the transfer of institutional practices to community living. Professor Christine Bigby reviews evolving understandings of deinstitutionalisation and the research that has informed its implementation for the diverse population of people with intellectual disabilities. Her presentation comparatively explores the policy and practice landscapes of countries with very different trajectories of deinstitutionalisation but which have made similarly-poor progress: the Nordic countries, which were the first to close all their institutions but with limited investment in community living since the 2000s, and Australia which has exponential growth in funding for disability support since the establishment of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) in 2013 and its fully individualised and marketised system since 2020. Bigby will then draw upon empirical data from a longitudinal study of disability group homes in Australia to illustrate what is possible in small group home settings and what is necessary to sustain good practice in them, while also identifying the continuing disadvantages experienced by people with higher support needs. These findings also illustrate the potential for individualism, markets and regulation to undermine and divert attention from best practices and tend to lead to inequitable outcomes for people with intellectual disabilities.