Old World--new territory: European perspectives on intellectual disability.

Walsh (1997) scanned Europe to see how well countries were including people with intellectual disability.

The paper lists laws, funding moves, and cross-border projects started in the 1990s.

It is a story-style review, not a lab study, so no single group was tested.

Most nations had closed large institutions and written inclusion policies.

Yet housing, work, and health gaps stayed wide, so the author called for shared European action.

Vassos et al. (2016) later pooled stronger data and showed Person-Centred Planning gives only small gains in choice and community use.

This tempers the 1997 hope that policy alone would create big inclusion leaps.

Navas et al. (2025) tracked adults who moved from wards to group homes and found large jumps in quality of life when staff offered daily choices.

Their result sharpens the 1997 plea: real inclusion needs choice on the ground, not just a new address.

van der Miesen et al. (2024) counted UK health studies and saw 78 % still lock out people with ID.

This hard number shows Europe still fights the very barrier Walsh (1997) flagged.

For you as a BCBA, the paper is a road-map of what still breaks. Use it to argue for cash for staff training, transport, and real choice routines. When you write transition plans, cite the later data: without daily decision-making, moving someone out of an institution may fail. Push teams to measure choice hours, not just placement type.