Involving people with intellectual disability in setting priorities for building community inclusion at a local government level.

Background: Local governments play an important role in supporting people with intellectual disability to feel included in their local communities and local‐level inclusion is an increasing priority for councils and local authorities in many countries. However, people with intellectual disability themselves have had little involvement in setting the priorities for initiatives and activities in their local communities. In the project, we wanted to know what kinds of initiatives were being implemented and what people with intellectual disability felt was important about these activities in their local communities. In this paper, we explore how the involvement of people with intellectual disability has shaped the outcomes of the review and implications for research and practice. Methods: We completed a review of local‐level inclusion‐building initiatives. We translated the results into accessible formats and our inclusive research team used these to involve six people with intellectual disability in New South Wales, Australia, in exploring their priorities around kinds of activities, quality and depth of inclusion in their local communities. Findings: The data showed that people wanted to share their deep, rich insights and questions about the things that drive inclusion and exclusion—not only their views about the effectiveness of particular kinds of activities. Conclusions: Implications for future policy and practice are that consultation should not be framed narrowly, but invite people with intellectual disability into conversation about change‐making at community and societal levels, as well as seeking their views on specific initiatives and activities. This opens up new opportunities to respond to the priorities of people with intellectual disability in local community‐building. Accessible summary: Our project was about the different kinds of activities that people with intellectual disability can do in their local communities.We talked with people with intellectual disability about these activities, to find out what they liked and did not like. We asked people what was most important about activities in their community.People wanted to talk more about what helped them to feel safe and welcome, not just the activity itself.Having safe places, having your rights, meeting people and making friends, and having accessible information, were all very important to people.This study is important to local planners and people in communities. They can think about how they are planning to make things safe and welcoming before they start planning an activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]