‘Life is team play’: social inclusion of people with intellectual disabilities in the context of Special Olympics

Abstract

This article provides insights from an empirical study on the meaning of social inclusion for Finnish athletes with intellectual disabilities (ID) who participate in Special Olympics (SO). A further objective was to explore the athletes' perceptions of the role SO has played in their lives regarding their personal experiences of social inclusion. Data were transcripts of five focus group interviews carried out with a total of 31 participants during the last SO World Winter Games in 2017. The content was analysed with the aim of identifying the main themes in the athletes' conversations about social inclusion. Three main themes were identified: inclusion as a contrast to past discrimination; inclusion as receiving and providing assistance; and inclusion as participation in teamwork. The results indicate that SO and arguably sport more generally can assist people with ID in moving forward on a path from being excluded toward social inclusion. Inclusion in sport: disability and participationThe inclusion of people with disabilities in sports has become an international issue with increasing numbers of UN member states ratifying the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (UN 2006). Article 30.5 of the convention addresses aspects of enabling the participation of people with disabilities in recreational, leisure and sporting activities on an equal basis with others (Kiuppis 2018a). In most countries, the obligations placed on nations who ratify the CRPD represent a remarkable shift from the middle of the twentieth century to the present, both in terms of attitudes toward people with intellectual disabilities (ID) in particular and in the promotion of opportunities for greater inclusion within society. In the 1950s, people with ID were considered as 'mentally retarded', which was framed as a health-related issue, and they were excluded from a sports-related discourse (Braddock 2010). The inception of Special Olympics (SO) in the USA in the 1960s started to bring 'mental retardation' out of its stigmatized and medicalized location in the health sector by providing recreational sporting opportunities for people with ID albeit in segregated settings (Hourcade 1989). As the move away from the traditional medical model of disability gained momentum toward a holistic public health perspective (Sobey 1970), sport for people with disabilities in general became increasingly organized also in integrated settings. In the late 1970s and in the 1980s, debates around the guiding principle of integration were first and foremost concerned with the question of how children with disabilities could ideally participate in mainstream sport settings (Orr 1979;Santomier 1985). This was in line with the social model of disability (Shakespeare and Watson 2001). The 'Integration Continuum' for sport participation that was developed in the USA (Winnick 1987) built upon models developed for provision of special education services (Reynolds 1962; Deno 1970) and Physical Education in particular (Winnick 1987, 160; see Kiuppis ...

Differences in physical activity volume and intensity between Unified and non‐Unified Special Olympics football training: An observational pilot study

“…One way to be physically active for people with intellectual disabilities is to participate in training and activities provided by Special Olympics. Next to higher levels of PA (Hsieh et al, 2017), participation in Special Olympics can have various benefits for the athletes in physical, psychological, emotional and social variables (Tint et al, 2017), for example, higher self‐confidence (Weiss et al, 2003) or in terms of social inclusion (Asunta et al, 2022).…”