What does “intellectual disability” mean?
Unlike organisations such as Handicap-International that work in the field of physical and intellectual disabilities, L’Arche’s work concentrates on people with an intellectual disability. In everyday language often used as a synonym for impairment or handicap, the international community has not agreed on a standard definition of the term. As describes by the World Health Organisation in its International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (http://www.who.int/classifications/icf/en/): “A variety of conceptual models has been proposed to understand and explain disability and functioning. These may be expressed in a dialectic of “medical model” versus “social model”. The medical model views disability as a problem of the person, directly caused by disease, trauma or other health condition, which requires medical care provided in the form of individual treatment by professionals. Management of the disability is aimed at cure or the individual’s adjustment and behaviour
