Young People with Intellectual Disability and Their Experiences with Intimate Relationships: a Follow-up Analysis of Parents’ and Caregivers’ Perspectives

Background Research shows that people with intellectual disability both want and benefit from relationships. Caregivers play an important role in the development and maintenance of these relationships. Barriers to relationships include lack of privacy, inadequate sex education, and lack of public transportation. Method The sample included 42 primary caregivers of young people with intellectual disability aged 14 to 25. Interviews were evaluated with the qualitative content analysis. Results Two-thirds of the caregivers reported the young people having had at least one relationship. The caregivers tended to minimize the importance of the young people’s relationships and reported, in equal measure, both positive and negative relationship skills. Caregivers described limited choice in terms of partner selection, lack of social opportunities, and low quality couple time. Parents face the detachment process with ambivalence and wish for a stable partnership for their children in the future. Discussion Young people with intellectual disability face barriers and limitations regarding intimate relationships. Some young people may keep their partnerships secret to avoid possible restrictions from their caregivers. Their time together is quantitatively high, but qualitatively poor due to a lack of transportation and inclusive services. Caregivers need to support the young people’s autonomy and take their relationships more seriously.

Setting a Framework of Inclusive Support for Students With Disabilities

The purpose of this chapter is to provide guidance to parents, teachers, and school administrators, as it relates to the various elements and considerations to implementing inclusion programming in schools. The author introduces the implementation of inclusion in terms of a multidimensional framework needed to support the inclusion of students with disabilities (SWD) in general education classroom settings. Inclusive settings allow access to the general education curriculum, ensuring compliance with federal law, and enhanced academic and social opportunities for students with disabilities. A discussion of key stakeholders in inclusion, as well as preparation, implementation, and sustainability of inclusion efforts are also reviewed.

Mixed Methods and Off/On-Line Research

The chapter proposes a methodological consideration on the use of mixed methods and the social opportunities of digital technologies in sports and wellness practices. The research carried out tries to answer the following question: What are the social repercussions and body care practices allowed by digital technologies in the field of sports and physical activities for well-being? The contribution investigates the relationship that is established between practitioners of individual fitness and wellness sports activities, mainly in gyms, and the changes attributable to HTI (human technology interactions) with digital devices (apps and participation in online groups). Through a qualitative-quantitative methodology approach, the multifunctionality of the aforementioned digital tools (on a mediatic, playful, and technological level) were observed in order to verify whether the convergence between digital and sports social worlds is an instrument of only subjective well-being or may indeed prove as a new collective way of sharing, participating in, and adopting healthy practices.

Serendipitous Cultural Tourist

Factors such as technological developments, increasing population growth, social opportunities, the right to paid vacation, increase in leisure time, increase in income level have provided tourism development and rapid acceleration in recent years. In addition, factors such as culture and education level have gained importance in the development of tourism. The prominence of cultural values in the destination management is proportional to the satisfaction of the tourists coming to the region. The aim of this chapter is to explain and give knowledge about the “serendipitous cultural tourist” typology, which is one of the types of tourists who do not come for cultural motivations. Although tourists do not participate in tourism for cultural purposes, the fact that they visit cultural attractions causes them to be named as cultural tourist type. Destination management organizers providing better service and more detailed information to the tourists improve the likelihood of them visiting the destination again.

French Support and Work Assistance Establishment and Social and Professional Integration of Workers With Disabilities in Rural Areas. The Example of Habert (Savoie, France)

This article proposes to address the issue of inclusion through work and in a rural environment of people with mental disabilities and/or intellectual disabilities. Through the example of a French support and work assistance establishment, the support and work assistance establishment Le Habert, located in a small rural and mountainous village in the Alps and offering people with disabilities to work on a farm, the article will first address the importance of work as a means for people to regain their dignity. Between the feeling of usefulness and pride in participating in the operation of one territory, by being fully involved in the process of producing and adding value to a product, accompanying the farm allows, apart from these therapeutic virtues, a real professional inclusion. Living in houses or apartments in the surrounding villages, the accommodation, allowing contact between people with disabilities and local inhabitants is also a vector of social inclusion. However, while the rural setting can be an asset for inclusion because of the professional and social opportunities, the isolation and geographical inaccessibility of the rural mountainous environment can be an obstacle for people who do not necessarily have the means to be mobile. By offering personalised support for mobility, the institution transforms geographical exclusion into an asset for professional, social and spatial inclusion.

Inequality and Dropout in Higher Education in Colombia. A Multilevel Analysis of Regional Differences, Institutions, and Field of Study

In Colombia, the gaps of regional inequalities and social opportunities permeate people’s economic, political, and social participation. Additionally, the initial endowments of individual and socioeconomic background, barriers to financial aid, and academic and personal skills restrict decision-making about studying. In this context, the main objective is to analyze the determinants of dropout rates in Colombia and the differences between the type of institutions, field of study, and regions. We used data from three public administrative agencies for the period 2000–2012. The methodology combines multiple correspondence analysis and a lineal hierarchical model to explain the effect of variables operating at different levels. As a result, we retained four dimensions to represent the individuals’ socioeconomic and financial conditions. The findings obtained from the multilevel model suggest the variation between institutions (11%) and the interaction between institutions and the program cycle (17.8%). It confirms the influence of inequities on desertion. The student chooses between programs with differences in fees and study costs in general, such as quality, social recognition, and employment. In sum, contextual and institutional disparities in the dropout phenomenon’s behavior are explained mainly by the supply conditions in these regions and the individuals’ socioeconomic backgrounds.

Touched by Loneliness – How Loneliness Impacts the Response to Observed Human Touch: a tDCS Study

Lonely people often crave connectedness. However, they may also experience their environment as threatening, entering a self-preserving state that perpetuates loneliness. Research shows conflicting evidence about their response to positive social cues, and little is known about their experience of observed human touch. The right inferior frontal gyrus (rIFG) is part of an observation-execution network implicated in observed touch perception. Correlative studies also point to rIFG’s involvement in loneliness. We examined the causal effect of rIFG anodal transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) on high and low loneliness individuals observing human touch. In a cross-over design study, 40 participants watched pictures of humans or objects touching or not touching during anodal and sham stimulations. Participants indicated whether pictures contained humans or objects and their reaction time was measured. Results show that the reaction time of low loneliness individuals to observed human touch was significantly slower during anodal stimulation compared to high loneliness individuals, possibly due to them being more emotionally distracted by it. Lonely individuals also reported less liking of touch. Our findings support the notion that lonely individuals are not drawn to positive social cues. This may help explain the perpetuation of loneliness, despite social opportunities that could be available to lonely people.

Pro-Poor Innovations to Promote Instrumental Freedoms: A Systematic Literature Review

Through a systematic literature review, this article aims to evaluate the impacts of various concepts of pro-poor innovations (PPI) on the five instrumental freedoms in Amartya Sen’s Capability Approach. For this, 165 articles were analysed to summarize the main influences of the pro-poor innovation on each type of instrumental freedom: political freedoms, economic facilities, transparency guarantees, social opportunities, and protective security. In general, the results indicate a positive influence of the innovation concepts for distinct types of freedom, with emphasis on the expansion of social opportunities and economic facilities.

Sustainable Development as Freedom: Trends and Opportunities for the Circular Economy in the Human Development Literature

This paper identifies, through a literature review, how 53 circular economy (CE) practices are related to the capability approach (CA) proposed by Sen. The main goal was to identify how a virtuous cycle between CE and CA can be developed. Five instrumental freedoms (IF) were analysed: economic facilities, social opportunities, protective security, political freedoms, and transparency guarantees. These relationships were analysed in three flows: CE practices positively impacting IF, CE practices negatively impacting IF, and the feedback influence of IF on CE practices. The results show that 32 of the 53 practices previously mentioned have not yet been studied from the CA context, which indicates that there are several research opportunities. From the practices considered, 72 articles were analysed in the final sample. The results suggest that several CE practices are aligned with the CA, considering that all five IF were identified as positive outcomes of CE practices. However, in some contexts, certain practices can have negative outcomes, which indicates that CE, at least in some cases, may not be considered as sustainable, as it decreases IF and, therefore, the social aspect of sustainability. The results also highlight that there is a feedback from IF to CE, in such a way that investing in the expansion of IF can facilitate the development of CE practices. Therefore, this study concludes that CE is indeed a way to fully operationalize sustainable development.

Silver Sneakers in Central PA: Assessment of a Community based Exercise Program in a Mixed Rural/Urban Catchment Area

Older cancer survivors present with unique challenges that may impact quality of life and increase physical dysfunction if not properly managed. Regular physical activity (PA) can help mitigate these effects. Silver Sneakers (SS), a free exercise program available to Medicare beneficiaries, has more than 16,000 US locations. To understand capacity of SS to serve older adults in our mixed rural/urban catchment area of Central Pennsylvania, we 1) identified all registered SS program locations in our 28-county catchment area and; 2) conducted phone questionnaires with SS program staff. Approximately 18 gyms closed during the pandemic, leaving a sample of 121 participating gyms. We talked to 80 gyms (66% response rate) to understand member and programming characteristics, training of staff and program marketing. Geographic locations of SS were mixed – 39% in rural and 61% in urban counties; the majority (43%) were located in private gyms or YMCAs. The majority of gyms reported membership was equally mixed by gender and described ages of members as 65-80 years (94%). Program staff said that many members exercised several times per week with friends/family. Program staff also reported that social opportunities (35%) were a primary reason participants remained active in SS. Most (89%) of the facilities were still able to offer SS during the pandemic, with the majority (60%) adapting format to Zoom and other video platforms to conduct classes. Overall, SS programs offer a sustainable option to facilitate access to exercise programs and reduce barriers to PA among older adults in our catchment area.