The exercise of human rights and citizenship by older adults with an intellectual disability in Ireland.

Abstract

The UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) provides the benchmark for assessing human rights and citizenship for people with disabilities. This emphasises autonomy, choice, independence, equality and participation for individuals as its fundamental guiding principles. This paper explores the exercise of human rights and citizenship for older adults with intellectual disabilities (ID) in Ireland, including choice-making, advocacy and political participation. Cross-sectional data (n=701) is drawn from wave 2 of the Intellectual Disability Supplement to The Irish Longitudinal Study on Ageing. Rates of participation are reported, along with bivariate associations across a range of demographic, personal and social variables, while factors associated with level of choice-making and voting are explored. We found very low rates of choice-making, advocacy and political participation amongst this population. Two factors of choice were explored: key life choice and everyday choice. Some commonalities were identified between the two factors, yet key differences were also noted. Type of residence was the strongest predictor of key life choice yet not significant in everyday choice, while the reverse was true for functioning in activities of daily living. Other factors were also significant in determining choice, including level of ID, contact with family, functional limitation, literacy, age, having friends and respondent type. Low rates of participation reported here impinge on the rights of older adults with ID under the principles of the UN CRPD. Choice-making emerged as a multi-factorial phenomenon, with different factors important depending on the type of choice involved. This encourages a nuanced and personalised response from policy and support services to overcome individual challenges to participation as equal citizens. The significance of respondent type also highlights the difficulty of including self-report, supported and proxy participants in ID research.