Deinstitutionalisation of people with intellectual impairment. A research by lens of Disability Studies and Institutional Analysis

The paper presents a multiple case study conducted between 2015 and 2018 on the process that enables subjects to attribute meaning to events, roles, devices and situations related to the construction of independent living of people with intellectual impairment. Institutional Analysis and the Disability Studies perspective constitute the theoretical framework of the research which adopted a convergent parallel design mixed methods.The focus was on intellectual impairment because if people with sensorial or physical impairment turn to domotics to live independently, an independent living for people with intellectual impairment is not even imagined as they still are seen as eternal children. The right of living independently is set out in the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, though. The study precisely aimed to investigate what Italy, Switzerland and Germany were doing to let people with intellectual impairment live independently about ten years later the Convention. Results suggest among other things the absence in some Italian facilities of a sort of support for people to becoming adult and a sort of endless mothering in the three countries involved in the study (most of the residential facilities are managed by women indeed).