ABSTRACT
This case study is on the deinstitutionalization of persons with intellectual disabilities in Finland. The government adopted resolutions in 2010 and 2012 to end institutional living for all by 2020. The ratification of CRPD in 2016 has been accelerating the ongoing efforts to implement the deinstitutionalization in practice. When the global and national policy is transcended into the practice of a locality, a number of local, contextual factors and realities based on historically rooted ways of social and cultural arrangements as well as austerity come to the surface. In this context, self-determination right of persons with severe intellectual disabilities is challenged in practice. While older persons with intellectual disabilities have lived their whole lives in institutions, younger generations with intellectual disabilities takes it for granted that they can enjoy independent living. Various aspects of today’s Finnish society could be both drivers and barriers for the deinstitutionalization. This complexity is analysed.
