Page 13 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

General Introduction
1.2 Social inclusion
In models of disability — for example, the International Classification of 1 Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) by the World Health Organization
(WHO, 2001) and the model of ID proposed by the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities (Luckasson et al., 2002), a shift from
an intrapersonal approach to a social ecological approach is visible (Verdonschot et al., 2009). Both models include ‘community participation’ as an essential dimension of human functioning. The concept of QOL has also been introduced to evaluate the general well-being of people with disabilities. Social inclusion, participation and social networks are generally seen as important domains of QOL (Buntinx & Schalock, 2010). However, these terms are used interchangeably (Amado, Novak, Stancliffe, McCarren, & McCallion, 2013) and are not well defined (Brown, Cobigo, & Taylor, 2015; Cobigo, Ouellette-Kuntz, Lysaght, & Martin, 2012; Overmars-Marx, Thomese, Verdonschot, & Meininger, 2014). Conceptual differences emerge around the scope (i.e. the activities, relationships and environments that social inclusion encompasses), the setting (i.e. integrated as well as private or segregated settings), and the depth of social inclusion (i.e. subjective and/or objective measurements) (Simplican, Leader, Kosciulek, & Leahy, 2015). Some researchers have defined social inclusion by its opposite, social exclusion, which is, in turn, defined as a lack of opportunities to participate in social, economic and/or political life (Cobigo, et al., 2012; Moonen, 2015). However, it is a simplification to say that someone is either included or excluded, because it is not a dichotomous phenomenon (Cobigo et al., 2012). Instead, the level of inclusion may vary across roles and environments, and over time (Cobigo et al., 2012). According to Simplican and colleagues (2015) social inclusion focuses on two domains, social relationships and community participation that mutually support each other. In line with previous models of disability, they propose an ecological model. In this model, social inclusion is influenced by multiple factors, including individual (e.g. IQ, self-esteem, self-motivation), interpersonal (e.g. relations with and attitudes of network members), organizational (e.g. culture of the organization and mission statements), community (e.g. availability and access to services and transportation) and socio-political (e.g. laws, market forces) factors (Simplican et al., 2015). These factors can promote or impede social relationships and community participation. With respect to social relationships Simplican and colleagues (2015) distinguish three characteristics: (a) category
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