Klaipėdos universitetas

The de-institutionalisation of the last two decades brings a poignant focus on social inclusion, exclusion and how to facilitate informed lifestyle choices among people with intellectual disabilities. This study explores some of the developments and challenges in participatory inquiry involving lay experts such as people with intellectual disabilities, their advocates and service staff in sheltered occupational sites. The core outcomes in this study are the collaboration between all involved actors identifying and implementing the service improvements needed. It was concluded that an inclusive joint research methodology may be a key and fundament for the development of supporting and empowering social care practice for this said population.

The ar­ti­cle ad­vo­cates the prin­ci­ples of So­cial Econ­omy (SE) as pos­si­bil­ity to de­velop in­no­va­tive so­cial tech­nolo­gies for the so­cial co­he­sion of so­ci­ety in situa­tion of eco­nomic break­down. The con­cept of So­cial Econ­omy can be con­sid­ered as Eu­ro­pean tra­di­tion and chal­l­enge for ap­ply­ing and find­ing sus­tain­able forms of so­cial in­clu­sion on na­tional level. The purpose and the ob­­ject of the study is to in­ves­ti­gate, which spheres and prin­ci­ples of SE are evi­dent in the ac­tivi­ties of com­mu­nity ini­tia­tives in Lat­via thus es­tab­lish­ing the rec­og­ni­tion level of con­cep­tual un­der­stand­ing and prac­tice of So­cial Econ­omy in na­tional con­text among the Third Sec­tor ac­tivi­ties in Lat­via and spe­ci­fi­cally non-profit move­ments. The overview of selected community initiatives showed there are initiatives that could be (1) placed in the sphere of productive economy on the scale of a community (2) by the very marginal people involved in initiatives, (3) administered as small businesses, (4) controlled by the people involved with democratic means of decision-making and (5) supported by social services and social workers, in order to overcome social exclusion.