Social inclusion or exclusion: are organisations that evaluate IHC managed group homes, incorporating community participation as a fundamental component to the service user’s quality of life?

Abstract

The group home concept derived from the transfer of people with intellectual disabilities living in institutional care into the community. Group housing for adults with an intellectual disability will continue to be a significant housing alternative for people who no longer live in the family home, and generally have moderate to high support needs. While the application of community participation has improved the quality of life of IHC service users, the literature suggests that there is room to expand the involvement of people with intellectual disabilities into their local communities. The auditing tools of the three main organisations evaluating IHC group homes are measured against two of the social indicators of quality of life developed by the Ministry of Social Development (MSD). Two of the three auditing tools examined have been adapted from the Health and Disability Sector Standards (HDSS), and are able to better reflect the level of community participation by service users, than the more generic HDSS model. Analysis of three auditing tools suggest that IHC can gain a good appreciation of whether service users, using a group home residential facility, are able to participate within their local community to the extent that they are achieving a measure of quality of life that is acceptable by independent assessors. Yet, the MSD social indicators, in their entirety, do not reflect a measurement that can be usefully applied to people with an intellectual disability. For people with intellectual disabilities to be better reflected in the social indicators, the Ministry of Social Development needs to revise the criteria in order to accommodate this particular group within the disability sector.