Featured Publications

Here is a short list of publications highlighting some of our more recent research and scholarship, including important contributions from our graduate students.

Reeves, P., McConnell, D., & Phelan, S. K. (2023). The (radical) role of belonging in shifting and expanding understandings of social inclusion for people labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Sociology of Health & Illness, 45(2), 317-330. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.13574

There is a gap between the desired outcomes of social inclusion policy and the everyday experiences of people labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Despite belonging rhetorically named in social inclusion policy and practice, belonging is often absent in the lives of people labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities and remains under theorised in its relationship to social inclusion. In this paper, we explore the role belonging might play in narrowing the gap between how social inclusion is theorised and how it is experienced. Drawing on critical disability and feminist relational theories, we outline a relational conceptualisation of belonging and use it to ‘crip’ the construct of social inclusion. Exploring the synergies and tensions that surface when social inclusion and belonging are held together as discrete but interconnected constructs, we name four conceptual shifts and expansions that allow us to see social inclusion differently. Through the centring of the experiences of people labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities, we explore the ways belonging can help to reimagine inclusion from assimilationist, static, objective and formal towards inclusion as fluid, negotiated, (inter) subjective, (in)formal and intimate.

McConnell, D., & Phelan, S. (2022). Devolution of eugenic practices: Sexual and reproductive oppression of people with ascribed intellectual disability. Social Science & Medicine, Volume 298. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2022.114877

Early 20th century eugenicists propagated a system of ideas, values and dispositions that constituted adults with intellectual disability as the antithesis of the paradigmatic citizen, and a biological threat to society. The eugenic schema was encoded in sex-segregated institutionalization and, in many places, forced sterilization. These eugenic practices are no longer sanctioned. However, eugenic practices did not disappear. In this paper we argue that the eugenic schema is now encoded and purveyed through a multiplicity of social arrangements and practices that deny adults with intellectual disability the respect, opportunity and means necessary to participate on a par with others in social life. Such practices include, for example, covert or coerced contraception, and discriminatory child welfare interventions leading to high rates of custody deprivation. Drawing on relational theory, we problematize normative assumptions of embodiment and citizenship, which give rise to attributions of incapacity, and argue that adults with intellectual disability need what all other adults need to make and effect choices concerning their sexuality, relationships and parenthood, i.e., recognition, opportunity and support..

McConnell, D., & Phelan, S. K. (2022). Intimate partner violence against women with intellectual disability: A relational framework for inclusive, trauma‐informed social services. Health & Social Care in the Community, 30(6), e5156-e5166. https://doi.org/10.1111/hsc.13932

Women with intellectual disability experience intimate partner violence at higher rates and tend to remain in abusive relationships longer than non-disabled women. The purpose of this inquiry was to generate a preliminary set of principles and de- lineate domains of support as a general guide for social service workers supporting women with intellectual disability through the difficult, often stop-start process of ending an abusive relationship and creating a desired future. Taking a pragmatic inquiry approach, guiding principles and domains of support were generated through a triangulated engagement with relational theory, relevant published research, and original data gathered through interviews with five experienced social service work- ers. The results comprise a relational framework for inclusive, trauma-informed services aimed at fostering the relational autonomy of women with intellectual disability. Enacting relational principles of reflexivity, recognition, solidarity and safety, social service workers can support women with intellectual disability with safety planning, securing basic life needs, strengthening social relationships, acquiring new skills and nurturing self-affective attitudes of self-respect, self-efficacy and self-esteem.

Pacheco, L., Aunos, M., Feldman, M., & McConnell, D. (2022). Reasonable efforts? Child maltreatment investigations and service referrals of parents with ascribed cognitive impairments in Canada. Child Maltreatment, 27(3), 501-510. https://doi.org/10.1177/10775595211001109

Parents with ascribed cognitive impairment (CI) are more likely than parents without CI to have their children removed by child protective services (CPS). Inequitable access to parenting and family supports and services is thought to be a contributing factor. Utilizing data on a 3-month sample of 15,980 child maltreatment investigations across Canada, including 1,244 cases featuring parents with CI, this study investigated service referrals and non-referrals. The results of this secondary data analysis suggest that, relative to need, parents with CI are less likely to be referred for matched services, including home based\reunification services post child removal. It is unclear whether disparate rates of referral are driven by a lack of inclusive services, and/or the conflation of parental CI with perceived parenting deficits. When perceived parenting deficits are attributed to parental CI, CPS may wrongly assume that these are irremediable. The findings highlight the need for building inter-sectoral service pathways in order to render appropriate assistance to parents with CI in the performance of their childrearing responsibilities.

Phelan, S.K., & Reeves, P. (2022). (Re)Imagining inclusion in ways that foster belonging in the lives of disabled children and youth. The Lancet Child & Adolescent Health, 6(2), 77-78. https://doi.org/10.1016/

For the greater part of the 20th century—thanks, in part, to disability rights movements around the world— disabled children and youth have increasingly been afforded access to community spaces, such as schools and classrooms, and activities, such as inclusive recreation programmes, alongside their non-disabled peers. However, despite increased access, disabled children report ongoing experiences of exclusion in spaces labelled as inclusive. … We, along with other critical scholars, call for a radical shift in how inclusion is envisioned and enacted, one that moves beyond rhetoric towards an actualisation of belonging. What if inclusion was radicalised as an approach that maintains political recognition and protection of human rights, but also disrupts and (re)negotiates ableist assumptions and norms that maintain an in and an out? We suggest the following radical shifts as strong starting places for beginning to (re)imagine inclusion.

Savage, A., McConnell, D., Emerson, E., & Llewellyn, G. (2020). The Subjective Well-Being of Adolescent Canadians with Disabilities. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 29(12), 3381-3397.

In line with growing interest in subjective well-being (SWB) as a goal of public policy, a substantial research base examining the correlates, effects and determinants of adolescent SWB is beginning to develop. However, there is a dearth of data on the SWB of adolescents with disabilities. The limited available data suggest that adolescents with disabilities in high-income countries face a heightened risk of poorer SWB relative to peers without disabilities. Few studies have investigated potential causes of disability-based differences in adolescent SWB. This lack of research may be due, in part, to the widely held but now contested assumption that disability is inherently negative and therefore a direct cause of poorer SWB. Utilising data from the Canadian National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, this study investigated the potential mediating role of adverse life conditions, including socioeconomic disadvantage, impoverished peer relationships, and peer victimisation. Employing structural equation modelling, the study found evidence consistent with a causal chain running from early childhood disability, through adverse life conditions, to poorer adolescent SWB. The ﬁndings suggest that poorer SWB in adolescents with disabilities cannot be assumed or attributed to disability in any straightforward way. All else being equal, including economic and social resources, adolescents with disabilities may enjoy levels of SWB that are not signiﬁcantly different from their non-disabled peers.