**4. Social inclusion**

Over the past 30 years, people with learning disabilities have increasingly been living in community settings rather than in segregated facilities and this pattern is reflected internationally [16–17]. People living in the community are assumed to be more likely to use community resources and to have more opportunities to experience roles and relationships that are inherent to being part of a community, thus achieving social inclusion [18].

Social inclusion can be described as not only being present in a community, but also having meaningful social connections and participating in fulfilling social activities [19]. Clifford-Simplican et al. [2] further define social inclusion as the interaction between two major life domains: interpersonal relationships and community participation and developed an ecological model of social inclusion that includes individual, interpersonal, organizational, community and socio-political factors.

It is widely acknowledged that this community participation remains an important element of well-being for people with learning disabilities [18] and a key component of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities [19]. People with learning disabilities, however, continue to experience high rates of social isolation [18, 20–24], and their social networks are composed mainly of family members and professionals [25]. The pattern of service provision perceived by Ritchie [25] in 1999 was one of the segregation and could still be said to be the same.

The aim therefore of service providers who wish to improve the lives of people with learning disabilities should be to reduce segregation and promote social inclusion. It seems that people with learning disabilities living in community settings participate more than people living in segregated setting; however, the level of participation is still much lower than in other marginalized groups [17, 26–27]. For social inclusion to occur, consideration must be taken of the attitudes of those in communities towards people with learning disabilities.
