Community participation and inclusion: People with disabilities defining their place

Disability-related public policy currently emphasises reducing the number of people experiencing exclusion from the spaces of the social and economic majority as being the pre-eminent indicator of inclusion. Twenty-eight adult, New Zealand vocational service users collaborated in a participatory action research project to develop shared understandings of community participation. Analysis of their narratives suggests that spatial indices of inclusion are quiet in potentially oppressive ways about the ways mainstream settings can be experienced by people with disabilities and quiet too about the alternative, less well sanctioned communities to which people with disabilities have always belonged. Participants identified five key attributes of place as important qualitative antecedents to a sense of community belonging. The potential of these attributes and other self-authored approaches to inclusion are explored as ways that people with disabilities can support the policy objective of effecting a transformation from disabling to inclusive communities.

Association between participation in life situations of children with cerebral palsy and their physical, social, and attitudinal environment:A cross-sectional multicenter European study

Objective:
To evaluate how participation of children with cerebral palsy (CP) varied with their environment.

Design:
Home visits to children. Administration of Assessment of Life Habits and European Child Environment Questionnaires. Structural equation modeling of putative associations between specific domains of participation and environment, while allowing for severity of child's impairments and pain.

Setting:
European regions with population-based registries of children with CP.

Participants:
Children (n=1174) aged 8 to 12 years were randomly selected from 8 population-based registries of children with CP in 6 European countries. Of these, 743 (63%) agreed to participate; 1 further region recruited 75 children from multiple sources. Thus, there were 818 children in the study.

Interventions:
Not applicable.

Main Outcome Measure:
Participation in life situations.

Results:
For the hypothesized associations, the models confirmed that higher participation was associated with better availability of environmental items. Higher participation in daily activities—mealtimes, health hygiene, personal care, and home life—was significantly associated with a better physical environment at home (P<.01). Mobility was associated with transport and physical environment in the community. Participation in social roles (responsibilities, relationships, recreation) was associated with attitudes of classmates and social support at home. School participation was associated with attitudes of teachers and therapists. Environment explained between 14% and 52% of the variation in participation.

Conclusions:
The findings confirmed the social model of disability. The physical, social, and attitudinal environment of disabled children influences their participation in everyday activities and social roles.

Dublin docklands. The urban fabric as cultural heritage

Introduction

Since the 1980s there have been major policies and projects for the redevelopment of Dublin Docklands. These projects were mainly aimed at profitable development of office, commercial and residential space, without a sound plan that would preserve the identity or community of the area. The recent shift in policies and urban design principles in the Dublin Docklands Area Master Plan 2008 shows that policy makers have acknowledged that mistakes were made in the last decades of the 20th century. The current map of the Dublin Docklands Area Master Plan 2008 gives us useful information about these changes. The Ringsend/ Irishtown area, which has kept a great part of its urban form and community identity throughout centuries, is described as an ‘area of protection of residential and services amenities’ (DDDA, 2008, map A). Meanwhile, the area of the Grand Canal Docks, recently developed, is described with the objective ‘to seek the social, economic and physical development or rejuvenation
within an area of mixed use of which residential and enterprise facilities would be the predominant uses’ (DDDA, 2008, map A). This classification shows that recent development has been unable to achieve the cohesion and complexity of existing neighbourhoods, revealing flaws not only in policy, but also in the built environment and approaches to urban design.

The shift towards the consideration of more community participation reveals a need to understand the tradition and past of these communities, while the urban fabric of small plots in the existing neighbourhoods, therefore, seems to have a very important role in the conservation of identity of place and providing the opportunity for difference within regularity. On the other hand, the new fabric of residential block developments in the docklands denies the possibility of developing a sense of community, and by providing only regularity, does not leave space for difference.

This paper will address questions related to urban morphology and town analysis in the case of Ringsend and Irishtown. This will provide a tool to learn from the past and perhaps find new models of development that might be less detrimental for the heritage of cities and urban communities. One of the ideas of this paper is to adhere to the new tendency in conservation policies to provide a broader analysis of urban areas, not only considering individual monuments in cities, but also analysing the significance of urban morphology and intangible heritage. It forms part of an OPW Post- Doctoral Fellowship in Conservation Studies and Environmental History.1 Research has been carried out in different areas of urban history of Dublin’s southern waterfront, including infrastructure history and a thorough analysis of the letters of the Pembroke Estate of the 19th century, which included the areas of Ringsend and Irishtown. However, this paper focuses on the study of urban form of the area and its significance to Dublin’s heritage.

Building bridging social capital in a divided society: The role of participatory citizenship education

Participatory citizenship education has been highlighted as a strategy to promote social cohesion in divided societies whereby collaborations with Non-Governmental Organisations and inter-school links have been proposed as tools to improve social networks between schools and communities. This article explores the role and meaning of citizenship education and cross-community participation in promoting social capital and social cohesion. School survey findings, focus groups and interviews with young people and educators indicated that differences between school sectors and established allegiances with particular communities and NGOs may limit the potential for citizenship education to produce bridging social capital and serve to reproduce bonding social capital. It is argued that the introduction of citizenship curricula into segregated schools systems in divided societies may be useful to promote citizenship values and positive attitudes to the other but insufficient to promote the development of bridging social capital and, ultimately, social cohesion in the long term.

Responsible Participation, Community Engagement and Policing in Transitional Societies: Lessons from a Local Crime Survey in Northern Ireland

The new structures of policing in Northern Ireland have been internationally lauded as a success, but the manner in which police-community relations are unfolding in local settings is less clear. In this article we draw on a local crime survey conducted in a Republican area in Belfast to examine residents’ views of policing and to highlight residents’ concerns about police effectiveness in dealing with crime and disorder. Drawing on Habermas’s concept of ‘responsible participation’, we also consider the role that community organisations can play in helping overcome local scepticism and developing positive forms of engagement with the police. © 2012 The Authors

Identifying solutions to increase participation in physical activity interventions within a socio-economically disadvantaged community: a qualitative study

Background: There is an urgent need to increase population levels of physical activity, particularly amongst those who are socio-economically disadvantaged. Multiple factors influence physical activity behaviour but the generalisability of current evidence to such ‘hard-to-reach’ population subgroups is limited by difficulties in recruiting them into studies. Also, rigorous qualitative studies of lay perceptions and perceptions of community leaders about public health efforts to increase physical activity are sparse. We sought to explore, within a socio-economically disadvantaged community, residents’ and community leaders’ perceptions of physical activity (PA) interventions and issues regarding their implementation, in order to improve understanding of needs, expectations, and social/environmental factors relevant to future interventions.

Methods: Within an ongoing regeneration project (Connswater Community Greenway), in a socio-economically disadvantaged community in Belfast, we collaborated with a Community Development Agency to purposively sample leaders from public- and voluntary-sector community groups and residents. Individual semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 leaders. Residents (n=113), of both genders and a range of ages (14 to 86 years) participated in focus groups (n=14) in local facilities. Interviews and focus groups were recorded, transcribed verbatim and analysed using a thematic framework.

Results: Three main themes were identified: awareness of PA interventions; factors contributing to intervention effectiveness; and barriers to participation in PA interventions. Participants reported awareness only of interventions in which they were involved directly, highlighting a need for better communications, both inter- and intra-sectoral, and with residents. Meaningful engagement of residents in planning/organisation, tailoring to local context, supporting volunteers, providing relevant resources and an ‘exit strategy’ were perceived as important factors related to intervention effectiveness. Negative attitudes such as apathy, disappointing experiences, information with no perceived personal relevance and limited access to facilities were barriers to people participating in interventions.

Conclusions: These findings illustrate the complexity of influences on a community’s participation in PA interventions and support a social-ecological approach to promoting PA. They highlight the need for cross-sector working, effective information exchange, involving residents in bottom-up planning and providing adequate financial and social support. An in-depth understanding of a target population’s perspectives is of key importance in translating PA behaviour change theories into practice.

Community Arts and Appropriate Internet Technology: Participation, Materiality, and the Ethics of Sustainability in the Digitally Networked Era

This thesis establishes appropriate internet technology as a matter of sustainability for the community arts field. It begins with a contextual review that historicises community art in relation to technological, cultural, and political change. It goes on to identify key challenges for the field resulting from the emerging socio-cultural significance of the internet and digital media technologies. A conceptual review of the literature positions these issues in relation to Internet Studies, integrating key concepts from Software Studies and the computational turn with approaches from the fields of ICT for Development (ICT4D), Critical Design, and Critical Making. Grounded in these intersecting literatures the thesis offers a new pragmatic ethics of appropriate internet technology: one involving an alternative philosophical platform from which suitable internet-based technologies can be designed and assembled by practitioners. I interrogate these ideas through an in-depth investigation of CuriousWorks, an Australian community arts organisation, focusing on their current internet practices. The thesis then reflects on some experimental interventions I designed as part of the study for the purpose of provoking shifts in the field of community arts. The research findings form the foundation of a series of recommendations offered to practitioners and policy makers that may guide their critical and creative uses of internet technologies in the future.

Frequency of participation of 8-12 year old children with cerebral palsy: a multi-centre cross sectional European study

Participation in home, school and community is important for all children; and little is known about the frequency of participation of disabled children. Frequency of participation is a valuable outcome measure for evaluating habilitation programmes for disabled children and for planning social and health services.

We investigated how frequency of participation varied between children with cerebral palsy and the general population; and examined variation across countries to understand better how the environmental factors such as legislation, public attitudes and regulation in different countries might influence participation.

We undertook a multi-centre, population-based study in children with and without cerebral palsy. Working from the Life-H instrument, we developed a questionnaire to capture frequency of participation in 8–12-year-old children. In nine regions of seven European countries, parents of 813 children with cerebral palsy and 2939 children from the general populations completed the questionnaire.

Frequency of participation for each question was dichotomised about the median; multivariable logistic regressions were carried out.

In the general population, frequency of participation varied between countries. Children with cerebral palsy participated less frequently in many but not all areas of everyday life, compared with children from the general population. There was regional variation in the domains with reduced participation and in the magnitude of the differences. We discuss how this regional variation might be explained by the different environments in which children live. Attending a special school or class was not associated with further reduction in participation in most areas of everyday life.

Social Participation and Maintaining Recommended Waist Circumference: Prospective Evidence From the English Longitudinal Study of Aging

Objectives: To investigate whether older adults participating in social activities are more likely to maintain or achieve recommended waist circumference (WC) levels. Method: A total of 4,280 older adults who participated in Wave 2 (baseline) and Wave 4 (follow-up) of the English Longitudinal Study of Ageing. WC was measured by a nurse in both study waves. Results: Participation in education, arts, music groups, evening classes, and in charitable associations was associated with maintaining recommended WC only in those men whose WC was in the recommended range at baseline. Participation in social activities was not associated with achieving recommended WC in women or men with initially large waist. Discussion: Participation in cultural and charitable activities may help in maintaining a recommended level of WC in older men with WC originally in the recommended range.

'Sometimes I wish I was an "ex" ex-prisoner': identity processes in the collective action participation of former prisoners in Northern Ireland

Since the signing of the Northern Ireland peace agreement a plethora of community based prisoner self-help organisations have been established wherein former prisoners staff, manage and deliver services to colleagues. By forging and maintaining their collective identities through community based mutual aid, members of these self-help organisations have progressed to create not only individual change/assistance but have also developed and evolved to tackle serious wider social issues which impact on the members of their organisations. This article critically analyses how the conditions of a post conflict society can influence both the development and evolution of these organisations and also how members situate their claims about the self in the organisation and beyond. Using the social movement framework it is argued that the work of these self-help organisations have given rise to a new politics of identity … that is the ‘politically motivated’ ex-prisoner. ©2013 Taylor & Francis