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This paper considers the ways that publicly funded developmental services for adults with developmental disabilities in southern Ontario are limited in how they support clients. This paper is informed by field research conducted in the summer of 2019, which was composed of semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and a policy review. Informed by parent advocates who are the main caregivers of their adult children labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities, this paper claims that the administrative processes of the Ontario ministry that manages and funds adult disability services relate to broader exclusionary patterns among adults with developmental disabilities. I explore this claim by reviewing how common ableist assumptions of people with developmental disabilities are ingrained in the policies and administrative processes of these services. I contribute to ongoing discussions among Critical Disability Scholars of the ways that disability as a social category can be articulated outside of ableist assumptions. Informed by parent caregiver perspectives, this article outlines how the limitations of provincially funded disability services in Ontario, Canada cause significant challenge in the lives of those labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities. One possible explanation for these limitations is that there is a disconnect between how the provincial government classifies who should receive immediate services and how many services, versus the actual need of those labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities. The criteria for high supports, such as monthly funding, placement into a living facility, and the provincial assessment for determining a person's 'adaptive functioning' are rooted in problematic assumptions made of people labelled with intellectual and developmental disabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, western governments influenced by neoliberalism have emphasized paid work as a key route to social inclusion and community participation for people with psychiatric disabilities. Although paid work can offer many rewards, access to mainstream employment for people with psychiatric disabilities is difficult as they continue to encounter discrimination and a lack of workplace accommodation. One response to these challenges has been the creation of social enterprises as ‘alternative spaces’ of employment for people with psychiatric disabilities. On the basis of interviews with key informants from 21 different social enterprises across Ontario, Canada, this paper critically analyzes the strategies used by organizations to create jobs that are both accommodating for people, but also conducive to the ongoing success of the business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the embodied experience of three women living with an episodic or fluctuating disability within the context of relapsing–remitting multiple sclerosis. I argue that this shifting embodiment is subjectively, performatively, and interpretively experienced in discrediting ways across social, organizational, and local contexts in women's lives. Drawing on findings from my doctoral thesis, three interpretive themes inform the analysis: not looking disabled, more than meets the eye, and institutional bafflement. Respectively, these themes pertain to a woman's physical appearance, cultural assumptions about disabled embodiment, and the contestation of social, organizational, and local institutional practices shaping women's lives. These themes hold implications for an ‘embodied politics' in rethinking the manner in which episodic disability is experientially, conceptually, and socio-politically recognized as a legitimate tier of the experience of disability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]