The concept of quality of life and its role in enhancing human rights in the field of intellectual disability.
Turn UN disability rights into everyday QoL scores to guide and defend your support plans.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Storch et al. (2012) wrote a think-piece, not an experiment.
They asked: Can we turn the big ideas in the UN disability-rights treaty into everyday quality-of-life numbers?
They mapped each treaty article to a life-domain you can score, like housing, friends, or safety.
What they found
The paper gives three ready-made plans.
Plan one: Use QoL scores to spot where rights are missing.
Plan two: Track the same scores while you give support.
Plan three: Show the numbers to policy makers so funding follows rights.
How this fits with other research
Symons et al. (2005) did the leg work first. Their survey of Chinese adults found seven QoL factors that match the same life-domains A et al. later linked to rights.
Glicksman et al. (2017) took the idea further. They built a step-by-step dialectic model so teams can balance rights talk with person-centered talk in real meetings.
Vassos et al. (2023) add a warning. Their 2023 review shows most mental-health scales for adults with ID still lack solid proof. If you want to monitor rights through QoL, pick tools with good data behind them.
Why it matters
You can now open the UN treaty at work and pick exact QoL items that match each article. If the team says "rights are too abstract," show them the mapped indicators and start measuring. It turns lofty language into concrete goals you can defend at the next ISP review.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
BACKGROUND: The changed societal views of persons with disabilities are reflected in the 2006 United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. However, what is not specified in the Convention is how to operationalise and measure the Articles composing the Convention, and how to use that information to further enhance the human rights of persons with disabilities. METHOD: The authors analyse the relationships between eight core quality of life domains and the 34 Articles contained in the Convention. RESULTS: There is a close relationship between the core quality of life domains and the 34 Articles contained in the Convention. Furthermore, the current status of these Articles can be evaluated through the assessment of indicators associated with the eight core quality of life domains. CONCLUSIONS: Based on the assessment of these quality of life-related outcomes, three strategies can be used to enhance the human rights of persons with intellectual disability. These three are to employ person-centred planning, publish provider profiles and implement a system of support.
Journal of intellectual disability research : JIDR, 2012 · doi:10.1111/j.1365-2788.2012.01585.x