Social Inclusion Practices Research Articles

Old Age, Disability, and the Tohoku-Oki Earthquake

Since the Evacuation/Sheltering Guideline was first published in March 2005, Japan has been a leader in systematically promoting evacuation and shelter assistance initiatives for people with special needs (PSND) in times of disasters. Despite the nationwide, community-based initiatives prescribed by the Guideline, this paper first addresses the issue of evacuation by examining mortality data of the total population, the elderly, and people with disabilities (PWD). The elderly and PWD mortality rates were not even across the three disaster-hit prefectures. Their institutionalization rate was suggested as one of the causative factors; more elderly and PWD died in Miyagi because more of them resided in their own homes, due to the prefecture's socially inclusive normalization policy. A case study of Miyagi's Hachiman community responses to its 17 registered PSND illustrated the ways to overcome the issue of mainstreaming preparedness components in the everyday practice of social inclusion for the elderly and PWD.

Práticas inclusivas na rede de atenção à saúde mental: entre dificuldades e facilidades

Objective: This study aimed to identify facilities and difficulties of professionals working in the mental health network to develop practices of social inclusion with mental disorder patients. Materials and Methods: This is an empirical research, with a descriptive nature - interpretive and qualitative, performed in the mental health care network of the municipality of Campina Grande/Paraiba/Brazil with 19 professionals, from June to July 2010. The empirical material was analyzed by using the content analysis technique, thematic and categorical type, in accordance to the resolution 196/96 of the National Health Council. Results: Among the difficulties, the financial, material and structural resources appeared as a factor that impedes progress in the consolidation of the users' social inclusion, being necessary intersectoral strategies. The prejudice and the stigma represent a challenge in the psychosocial attention. As facilities, stand out the professionals availability to work with this segment, besides the training in continuous education that has allowed exchanges of knowledge, basing the interdisciplinarity required for the process of team work. Conclusion: In this context, there is a need for caution from the managers facing the difficulties identified, since this fact can interfere directly in the care that is being offered to users. However, the facilities found in the study, beyond the borders of mental health care, is a fact that consolidates the psychiatric reform, even in a gradually way in this country.

La inclusión como dominación del otro por él mismo

A partir de la comprensión de los conceptos biopolítica,gubernamentalidad y del par normal/anormal, talcomo ellos fueron desarrollados por Michel Foucault,el artículo analiza las actuales políticas y prácticas deinclusión social, como dispositivos implicados en unaoperación de plegamiento del Otro sobre él Mismo.Explorando la polisemia del par inclusión/exclusión,se argumenta que el imperativo de la inclusión seinstala en consonancia con la biopolítica y al serviciodel neoliberalismo.

Social inclusion policies and practices across Europe

Paul Maloret explains how the Erasmus scheme grants learning disability nursing students opportunities to travel abroad and explore inclusive practices for vulnerable people

Inclusive practice? Supporting isolated bilingual learners in a mainstream school

This paper is based on action research carried out in a primary school in Scotland where few bilingual learners shared their home language with classmates or staff. It investigated the educational experiences of bilingual children in the early stages of primary school, in which there were often practical difficulties supporting isolated learners in using their home language in school. It tracked a cohort of isolated bilingual learners over a period of two years and considered how theories of support for bilingual learners can be applied to isolated learners. It identified two themes: support for new arrivals who are at the early stage of acquisition of English and how monolingual schools can show that they value home languages and promote bilingual skills. The research reveals techniques for tackling the very real social issue of bilingual learners in monolingual classrooms, a topic of currency in today’s climate. It engages with concepts of pupil difference, practices of social justice and inclusion, as well as consideration of a quality curriculum for all students. The study reflects on practical arrangements for new arrivals, working with parents unfamiliar with the education system and creating opportunities for pupils to use and share their home language within school.

Social inclusion and metrolingual practices

In this paper, we explore the implications of metrolingual language practices for how we understand social inclusion. A vision of social inclusion that includes bi- and multilingual capacities may comprise an appreciation of a diversity of languages other than English, and the skills and capabilities of multilingual language users, yet it is all too often premised on an understanding of language use that cannot escape its origins in statist understandings of language ideologies where a particular language is associated with a particular cultural, ethnic or geographical configuration. Recent studies show the creative ways in which language users cross linguistic and cultural boundaries to form new linguistic and cultural possibilities. In this paper, we therefore ask how we can open up an understanding of social inclusion to include not only the recognition of bilingual capacity but also the fluidity and flux of the metrolingual workplace where creative language use beyond static linguistic boundaries are present. Such a move, however, raises important questions for what is included and excluded in any model of social inclusion since it renders the boundaries of difference more fluid than in other approaches to language diversity. We conclude by suggesting to the extent that social inclusion has become the ‘new multiculturalism’, it can, if broadly conceived and allied to metrolingualism, present a new way forward in understanding language and social disadvantage.

Entre trapiches, trilhas e vilas: organização comunitária e práticas sustentáveis no Distrito de Mosqueiro, PA, Brasil

The Project “Amidst docks, tracks and villages: Community organization and Sustainable practices at Mosqueiro District , PA” aims to achieve interaction of academic and traditional knowledge, in order to study and analyze social organization at Mosqueiro District -specifically the communities of Caruaru and Castanhal of Mari-mari-, to contribute to the improvement of livelihood practices so as to enable them understanding their own actions as well as the political and cultural processes involved. In this context, we will discuss actions attempting a dialog between systematized and traditional knowledge, interacting and planning, altogether with local families and partners, actions favoring sustainability of natural resources and supply as well as the widening of economic alternatives that provide employment, income, social inclusion and non-destructive environmental practices. One of these possibilities is community-based tourism.

‘Urbanizing’ Bishkek: interrelations of boundaries, migration, group size and opportunity structure

Within the context of Kyrgyzstan's capital Bishkek, this article deals with an identity boundary between the so-called ‘urban’ Kyrgyz and Russians on the one side, and the so-called ‘rural’ or ‘newly arriving’ Kyrgyz, on the other. In the first section I discuss the ways in which this boundary is constructed among Bishkek male youth, both rhetorically as well as with regard to actual practices of social inclusion and exclusion. Starting from these insights on what ‘makes’ an urban identity, I try to approach the question of why this boundary might be drawn as it is. Linking a theory on ‘group size’ with migration data for Kyrgyzstan and the concept of ‘opportunity structure’, I try to examine the allocation and accessibility of opportunities such as jobs, marriage and living space – all of which can be considered to affect the current divide between ethnic Kyrgyz in Bishkek.

‘Family Structure’: Intractable Eurocentric Fantasies in Contemporary Israel

This article offers a critical study of the iteration and reiteration of Israel’s national identity. Thus this study falls within a well charted research terrain. And like many studies falling within its purview, it is also intended to do more than just describe attempts to impose uniform collective identity on obdurate social and cultural diversity. It is intended to examine the national project as ‘a form of cultural elaboration’ entrapped within an insoluble predicament.While aiming at molding a homogeneous national collective out of social and cultural diversity, this project generates intricate dialectics involving practices of social inclusion and exclusion. These dialectics take on board often racial myths. We examine these dialectics and the racial myths associated with them vis-à-vis the iteration and reiteration of Israel’s national identity. Aside from inculcating the belief among Israeli Jews that their identity is reflective of a common cultural heritage that reaches back to times immemorial, these myths also register a yearning to reconnect Israel with its lost European, ‘Judeo-Christian’ heritage. Conveying these aspirations, either covertly or overtly, these myths support and reconfirm existing social and racial hierarchies in Israeli society.

Strengthening youth citizenship and social inclusion practice — The Australian case: Towards rights based and inclusive practice in services for marginalized young people

This article provides a framework for understanding disadvantaged young people from a youth citizenship perspective that includes social inclusion principles and a rights based approach to service delivery. This paper will argue that a rights based and inclusive practice approach can help to enable the self-confidence, resilience and capacities of marginal youth in efforts to counter social exclusion. A social inclusion strategy that is derived from the European Union helps frame inclusive practice and is explicitly linked to an emerging national human rights and inclusive agenda for marginalized youth in Australia. Elements of inclusive service practice include youth participation in services, issues of access and equity, service responsiveness, joined-up services and user-led accountability. These elements provide a basis for bringing a citizenship framework into services, and for professional learning and education in work with marginal youth. A framework is suggested that seeks to recognise and respond to highly disadvantaged youth that includes the marginalizing ‘intersections’ of gender, racial and disability identities. Brief excerpts of secondary qualitative data on two highly vulnerable youth populations–homeless youth and Aboriginal youth–are used to highlight the need for a citizenship approach that listens and responds to these vulnerable young people in both research and practice.

From Access to Success: An Integrated Approach to Quality Higher Education Informed by Social Inclusion Theory and Practice

Equitable access, success and quality in higher education are examined from a variety of ideological perspectives. Quality is positioned as a complex generic concept while access and success are identified as key concepts in the social inclusion domain, supplemented by the concept of participation. The topic is approached through an integrative analysis of the theory and practice literature on social inclusion in higher education. After contextualising current higher education within economic globalisation, the notion of quality is uncoupled from the necessity of a neoliberal framing allowing broader interpretations arising from more inclusive ideologies. Access, participation and success are shown to represent degrees of social inclusion underpinned by a nested spectrum of ideologies — neoliberalism, social justice and human potential, respectively — with human potential ideology offering the most embracing perspective. Australian higher education is foregrounded, yet contextualised within European historical precedents and contemporary global issues.

Theory of mind abilities in children with Down syndrome and non-specific intellectual disabilities: An empirical study with some educational implications

Several researchers explored the impact of cognition, language and social understanding on theory of mind abilities in typically developing (TD) children and children with intellectual disabilities (ID) (either ID of genetic origin or non-specific ID). The aim of the present study was to determine the specificity of the theory of mind deficit to different groups of children with ID. The results are in accordance with the developmental approach of similar structure hypothesis (Zigler, 1969). The findings are discussed in terms of the specificity of the etiology-related theory of mind profiles of ID groups, considering the educational and social inclusion practices.

Communities of Influence ‐ mobilising NHS foundation trust governors and members to promote social inclusion through community engagement

This article describes the National Social Inclusion Programme's Communities of Influence workstream, the premises on which it was founded, the innovative social inclusion practice it proposed, what was learned and how the work will be taken forwards in the future.

Social Inclusion and Local Practices of Belonging

Social inclusion has been conceptualised as having two key aspects: distributional aspects relating to access to resources including employment, and relational aspects which concern the connections between people and the wider society. While both are important, the emphasis in Australian social inclusion policy has been on distributional aspects. This paper focuses on the relational aspects of social inclusion, and argues that it is critically important to include relational considerations in social inclusion policy.
 
 Central to the relational aspects of social inclusion is achieving a sense of belonging, particularly at the everyday, local level. Belonging in this everyday sense can be thought of as an ongoing project achieved through everyday practices, rather than solely in terms of membership of a group. While many such practices, for example regularly engaging in team sports, are accepted ways of establishing and maintaining belonging, for others in a community practices of belonging may necessitate disrupting or at least broadening the established norms of how one belongs.
 
 To ground this discussion of inclusion and belonging, this paper draws on practices of belonging in a regional community. Established norms of belonging are examined through the idea of ‘being a local’, a way of belonging that appears to be based on membership. The paper then turns to two local projects which disrupt the exclusive bounds of local membership and establish new and inclusive practices of belonging. To conclude, parallels are drawn between the boundaries which define ‘the social’ in social inclusion and ‘the local community’ in being a local, to argue for the importance of including relational aspects of social inclusion within social inclusion policy debates and program formulation.

Designing for Food and Agriculture: Recent Explorations at Ryerson University

Strategies to enable alternative urban food systems cannot be developed alone by those involved with the production and distribution aspects of food systems. It is important for architects, landscape designers and planners to be part of the process of conceiving and implementing innovative food-system thinking. Environmentally focused building standards and models for sustainable communities can easily incorporate farmers' markets, greenhouses, edible landscapes, permeable paving, green roofs, community gardens, and permaculture and other food-related strategies that complement energy generation and conservation, green roofs, living walls, and other approaches that have been more commonly part of sustainable built-environment initiatives. Recently, architecture faculty and students at Ryerson University in Toronto and at a number of other universities have been exploring the intersection of these disciplines and interests. This paper will show how Ryerson tackled agricultural and food issues as design challenges in projects that included first-year community investigations, student-run design competitions, third-year studio projects and complex final-year thesis projects. These projects that dealt with food issues proved to be excellent entry points for addressing a range of design challenges including social inclusion, cultural context, community design and sustainable building practices.

MULTICULTURALISM, NATIONALISM, AND THE POLITICS OF THE ISRAELI CITY

This article examines the prospect of urban multiculturalism in the Israeli city of Ashdod against the intricate metrics of modernism and ethnonationalism. This prospect is sometimes endorsed by the city's leaders, but at the same time it answers the logic of ethnonationalism that not only works toward cultivating a homogenous collective and homogenous space but also endorses Western and Eurocentric biases. This logic facilitates practices of social inclusion and exclusion both materially and symbolically. Furthermore, we argue that in Ashdod, ethnonationalism is intertwined with the logic of the market, encouraging social hierarchies and stratifications that carry the stamp of “ethnoclassism” along First and Third World dichotomies. Yet, these processes do not completely foreclose the prospect of multiculturalism, because they cannot completely forestall “bottom-up” forces that promote it either intentionally or inadvertently. The assessment of Ashdod as a potential site of urban multiculturalism becomes nuanced and intriguing as we take into account city planning that considers a modern vision of the city and ethnonational logic, on the one hand, and forces of bottom-up initiatives, on the other. All in all, the city fails the multicultural challenge if by this challenge we understand the establishment of institutional arrangements that guarantee the right to the city—or equal access to all benefits that the city may offer—while allowing residents to cultivate and maintain their cultural uniqueness.

Beyond anti‐bias education: changing conceptions of diversity and equity in European early childhood education

The articles draws on history‐of‐the‐present research on Belgian childcare, on experiences within the European DECET network (Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Training) and on post‐structuralist theory. A historical hindsight is helpful to understand how different discourses on diversity and equity in early childhood education have been constructed: from the ideology of homogeneity over multicultural education to the anti‐bias curricula of the 1990s. It is argued that, in spite of its obvious merits, some of the theoretical concepts underpinning the issue of diversity in early childhood education may be questioned. Post‐structural theory, but also recent societal changes (such as individualisation, de‐traditionalisation and neo‐liberalism) present new challenges to research, policy and practice of diversity and social inclusion in early childhood education. Cet article se base sur une recherche généalogique des lieux d’accueil belges, sur les expériences dans le réseau européen DECET (Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Training), ainsi que sur des fondements théoriques postmodernes. Une vue rétrospective peut contribuer à mieux comprendre comment les discours sur la diversité et l’équité dans les lieux d’accueil préscolaires ont été construits, partant de l’idéologie de l’homogénéité, passant par le multiculturalisme, et l’approche de l’éducation sans préjugés (anti‐bias) des années 1990. Malgré les mérites de ces dernières approches, il sera argumenté qu’une réflexion sur les concepts théoriques sous jacents s’impose. Le post‐structuralisme ainsi que de récents changements sociétaux, tels que l’individualisation, la détraditionalisation et le neo‐libéralisme nous obligent à repenser les fondements des pratiques, des politiques et des recherches dans le domaine du respect pour la diversité et de l’inclusion sociale. Der Artikel bezieht sich auf die zeitgeschichtliche Forschung über die belgische Kinderbetreuung, auf Erfahrungen innerhalb des europäischen DECET‐Netzwerkes (Diversity in Early Childhood Education and Training) und auf die poststrukturalistische Theorie. Ein historischer Einblick ist hilft zu verstehen, wie unterschiedliche Diskurse über Diversity und Gleichheit in der frühkindlichen Bildung konstruiert worden sind: von der Ideologie über Homogenität über multikulturelle Bildung bis zu Anti‐Vorurteils‐Curricula der 1990er Jahre. Es wird ausgeführt, dass trotz offensichtlicher Verdienste einige der theoretischen Konzepte, die der Frage der Diversität in der frühkindlichen Bildung unterlegt sind, in Frage gestellt werden können. Die poststrukturelle Theorie, aber auch neuere gesellschaftliche Veränderungen wie Individualisierung, Enttraditionalisierung und Neoliberalismus liefern neue Herausforderungen für die Forschung. Politik und Praxis von Diversity und sozialer Inklusion in der frühkindlichen Bildung. El articulo es escrito a partir de la historia de la actual investigación de la formación de párvulos en Bélgica, de las experiencias de la red europea DECET (Diversidad en la educación parvularia) y de teorías post‐estructuralistas. Una mirada al pasado es útil para comprender como diferentes discursos sobre diversidad e igualdad en la educación parvularia han sido construidos: desde la ideología de la homogeneidad, pasando por la educación multicultural al currículo “anti‐bias” de los años noventa. Se argumenta que, a pesar de sus meritos obvios, algunos de los conceptos teóricos que sustentan el tema de la diversidad en la educación parvularia pueden ser cuestionados. La teoría post‐estructural, pero también cambios recientes en la sociedad (tales como individualización, de‐tradicionalismo y neoliberalismo) presentan nuevos desafíos a la investigación, la política y la practica de la diversidad e inclusión social en la educación parvularia.

Inclusion

A school governor examines the concept and practice of educational and social inclusion, and reflects upon her own experiences of the inclusion of children with visual and hearing.

The Care Programme Approach — Recasting the Vision

In 1991 the Care Programme Approach was introduced with a view to providing a framework for planning the care of people with mental health concerns. Since then the political and cultural clime of mental health policy and practice has changed following the increasing numbers of people who use, or have used, services working in partnership with committed groups of families, friends and professionals to dispel many of the myths that surround mental and emotional distress. More recently, however, we have witnessed the most radical mental health legislation to date. The Government demonstrated its commitment and vision to implementing recovery-assisting services through the National Service Framework for Mental Health (Department of Health, 1999). The essence of all such recent guidance lies in the values of social inclusion and person-centred practice. Thus, what back in 1991 appeared to be an appropriate process of planning for people has been very quickly and very publicly challenged – and the CPA has been found wanting. Despite a huge movement throughout the western world in the advancement of a social model of care, there remains incredibly strong resistance to the letting go of the medical model and changing the system from within. The continued use of the Care Programme Approach clearly perpetuates many of the power imbalances that occur with the practical application of the medical model of care and support. A ‘It is impossible to resist the conclusion that a gulf exists between the majority of doctors and their patients. First, there is a lack of understanding on the doctor’s part of the exigencies of the patient’s situation. Second, the demographic differences between doctor and patient have implications for the type of explanatory model used by the doctor, and how he or she uses (or imposes) this on the patient.’ (Thomas, 1997)