This two-year (2016-2018) study aimed to identify what a good life is for Aboriginal people with disability in remote Central Australia and how service providers can support them to achieve a good ...life. This paper presents the findings that relate to barriers to delivering services for Aboriginal people with disability.
In-depth interviews and focus groups were held with Aboriginal people with disability and their carers aged at least 18 years from the Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara (NPY) Lands and community organisations providing services there. The data were analysed using thematic analysis.
There were 109 participants, of whom 47 were workers in service provider organisations and 62 were Aboriginal people. From the data, barriers to delivering services to support Aboriginal people to live a good life and solutions to overcome the barriers, were identified and described under the headings of environmental barriers and systemic issues.
We discuss the policy implications of these findings with regard to addressing Indigenous disadvantage and how governments, service providers, communities, and Aboriginal people with disability and their families can work in partnership to address these barriers.
Implications for Rehabilitation
Indigenous people with disability living in remote and very remote communities experience significant access and equity barriers to culturally responsive services that enable them to live a socially and culturally engaged life.
Localised government and service provider disability policy approaches in Indigenous communities need to focus on both environmental and systemic issues.
Greater investment in local remote communities is required to build the capacity of Indigenous families to support Aboriginal people with a disability to live a culturally and socially included life.
To explore the benefits of a brief autism education intervention on peer engagement and inclusion of autistic children at day camps. A convergent, parallel, two-arm (intervention/no intervention), ...non-randomized, mixed-methods design was used. The individualized, peer-directed, 5-10 min intervention included four components: (1) diagnostic label, (2) description and purpose of unique behaviors, (3) favorite activities and interests, and (4) strategies to engage. A timed-interval behavior-coding system was used to evaluate engagement between each autistic camper and their peers based on videos taken at camp (days 1, 2, 5). Interviews with campers and camp staff explored why changes in targeted outcomes may have occurred. Percent intervals in which the autistic campers were jointly engaged with peers improved in the intervention group (n = 10) and did not change in the control group (n = 5). A large between group intervention effect occurred by day 5 (Z = - 1.942, η
= 0.29). Interviews (5 autistic campers, 34 peers, 18 staff) done on the last day of camp in the intervention group garnered three themes: (1) Changed behavioral attribution, (2) Knowledge facilitates understanding and engagement, and (3) (Mis)perceptions of increased inclusion. A brief educational intervention that includes individualized explanatory information and strengths-based strategies might improve peers' understanding of and social engagement with autistic children in community programs such as camps.
Participation in sports represents a potent means of empowerment and social inclusion. Nevertheless, women with physical impairments encounter specific challenges in accessing Para sports. The main ...aim of this study is to present the experiential participation and achievements in sports of women with physical impairments in Saudi Arabia.
Twenty women athletes with physical impairments who engaged in competitive Para sports in Saudi Arabia were interviewed. Interpretive phenomenological analysis was employed to extract themes elucidating the experiences of women athletes with physical impairments in Para sports.
Four dimensions were identified: (i) Exploring participation in sports; (ii) The positive impact of participation in sports; (iii) obstacles in participation in sport; and (iv) hopes and aspirations to improve participation in Para sports.
In Saudi Arabia, participation in Para sports functions as a powerful tool for empowering and socially integrating women with physical impairments. However, these women encounter challenges in accessing sports. Achieving empowerment in Para sports necessitates the establishment of an inclusive ecosystem that celebrates diversity and equality. Collaborative efforts from governments, sports organizations, communities, and individuals are indispensable in creating an environment where women with impairments can flourish in sports.
Inclusive innovation, which we define as innovation that benefits the disenfranchised, is a process as well as a performance outcome. Consideration of inclusive innovation points to inequalities that ...may arise in the development and commercialization of innovations, and also acknowledges the inequalities that may occur as a result of value creation and capture. We outline opportunities for the development of theory and empirical research around this construct in the fields of entrepreneurship, strategy, and marketing. We aim for a synthesis in views of inclusive innovation and call for future research that deals directly with value creation and the distributional consequences of innovation.
This commentary aims to shed light on the neglected space of queer people in science communication. In this piece, we introduce queer theory to science communication literature to examine issues from ...the past, present, and future. We argue that to queer our field may entail a radical interrogation of some of science communication's deeply rooted cultural traits and working towards a rainbow-tinted future.
When we experience damage to a social connection—in particular, perceiving that others have devalued our relationship with them—we experience “social pain.” Prior studies have typically examined ...social pain by creating explicit contexts to elicit experiences of relational devaluation. However, there may be other antecedents of social pain that do not involve direct threats to social belongingness. For example, personal failures, mistakes, or accidents that do not involve overt relational devaluation may also be socially painful because they can damage self-esteem—a marker of the self-perceived value we bring to all of our relationships. In the present study, 739 online participants were randomly assigned to imagine or experience events in one of three conditions: social inclusion, personal adversity with explicit relational devaluation (e.g., social rejection), or personal adversity without explicit relational devaluation (e.g., failing an exam). Participants were exposed to these experiences in one of three possible ways: by writing about a past memory, participating in an online game, or writing about an imagined future scenario. Well-established self-reported measures of social pain were administered following the assigned task. Results demonstrated that the personal adversity conditions, both with and without explicit relational devaluation, evoked consistently more social pain across measures than inclusion but generally did not differ from one another. These findings suggest that even when it has not been made explicit, relational devaluation may be socially painful by virtue of threatening self-esteem, supporting the notion that many of our life experiences, independent or relational, are imbued with social significance.
A growing concern for mobility-related social inclusion and equity is evident from both academic research and planning best practices. Scholarly research promotes accessibility as the main aim of ...transport planning, assuming it as the evaluative approach that better conveys how mobility contributes to individuals' well-being and participation in social life. Accessibility can be crucial to address the socio-spatial inequalities that characterise manifold settings across the world. Amongst them, Latin American countries have been keen in tackling such imbalances through mobility-related interventions, as the renowned cases of Curitiba, Medellin and Bogotá show. The widespread interest in mobility as both a cause and effect of social disparities has generated an increasing stream of work that examines Latin American settings through the lenses of accessibility. This paper aims at critically reviewing the growing scholarly works that, providing accessibility-based evaluations, has examined issues of transport and equity in Latin America. Proposing a novel conceptual framework that considers the underlying ethical stance, components of accessibility and implications for planning and policy, this work examines what approaches, features and indicators are present in the current literature, as well as what settings have been taken into consideration by scholarly research. Moreover, the review has an explicit operational interest, to define what indicators are relevant or missing to assess accessibility in the light of social concerns, as well as to consider the current and potential implications that such research findings have on transport planning and policy. The review highlights how a growing but still limited body of work has examined transport and equity in Latin America, suggesting academic, technical and operational avenues to enhance theoretical and practical approaches to the issue.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors which influence refugee migrants’ adoption of digital technology and its relevance to their social inclusion in Australia.
...Design/methodology/approach
– This research developed a conceptual framework keeping the “use” of digital technology as the centre-piece of the digital divide. The empirical data were derived from a series of focus group discussions with refugee migrants in an Australian regional city, Toowoomba in Queensland.
Findings
– There is a digital divide among refugee migrant groups and it is based on inequalities in physical access to and use of digital technology, the skills necessary to use the different technologies effectively and the ability to pay for the services. The opportunities to use digital technology could support the social inclusion of refugee migrant groups in the broader Australian community.
Research limitations/implications
– Further research is required to examine whether this digital divide is unique in the regional context or common to Australian society and to confirm factors that might contribute significantly to refugee migrants’ social inclusion.
Originality/value
– This paper determined the role digital technology can play in building social capital and hence social inclusion among refugee migrant groups. Many of the factors identified as influencing refugee migrants’ use of digital technology can inform the Australian government and the information and communication technology industry in devising supportive policies and plans to reduce the risk of social exclusion, alienation and marginalisation among refugee migrant groups.
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