The ‘problem’ of abuse in Ontario’s Social Inclusion Act: A critical exploration

Employing Carol Bacchi’s What’s the problem? approach, this article examines the abuse policy recently implemented through the Social Inclusion Act of Ontario, Canada’s developmental services sector (DSS), and how it constitutes sexual abuse of people with intellectual disabilities as a policy problem. Politically committed to preventing and addressing abuse, we examine how sexual abuse is ‘given shape’ in the policy and its compliance training materials, and how the policy’s mandatory police reporting requirement ‘subjectifies’ victims according to a taken-for-granted legal ‘worldview’ that presumes justice is achieved through criminalisation. We also demonstrate the everyday ‘deleterious effects’ of this policy in relation to how it leaves both support for sexuality and the long-standing crisis management approach of Ontario’s DSS unproblematised. This analysis calls into question the abuse policy of the Social Inclusion Act and demonstrates the pressing need to re-problematise abuse prevention and redress for people with intellectual disabilities.