How L'arche Kenya's disability inclusion model moves communities from charity to belonging

Abstract

This article presents a qualitative impact assessment of L'Arche Kenya's disability inclusion model, situated in Nyahururu, Laikipia County, and organized around two shared-living homes, Effatha and Betania. Guided by the social model of disability and by an interpretive lens drawn from community-of-difference scholarship on shared-living arrangements for adults with intellectual disabilities, the assessment examined how a model built on mutual relationships had shaped the quality of life of adults with developmental disabilities (core members), the experience of day-programme families, and public understanding of developmental disability in the surrounding community. This study is anchored on social model of disability. Data were collected over ten days across two months from twenty-two purposively sampled participants, including core members, house assistants, family caregivers, employers, and a community leader, using key informant interviews, home visits, participant observation, and document analysis, and were analyzed inductively through a modified thematic analysis. Findings across three objectives show that core members reported gains in autonomy, financial literacy, voice, hygiene, and social belonging; that day programme families received practical, relational, and economic support through home visits, modelled inclusion, peer networks, and transport provision; and that employers and community members described meaningful, if uneven, shifts in attitude toward disability, alongside continuing charity-oriented framing. The assessment situates these findings within Kenya's national disability employment gap and within international scholarship on community-of-difference models of intellectual disability care, while foregrounding methodological limitations tied to the commissioned nature of the underlying assessment and the concentration of participant voice in family and staff accounts, not in core members' own first-person testimony. The findings indicate that community-based, relationship-centered models such as L'Arche can advance disability inclusion meaningfully at the relational and attitudinal level even where economic inclusion remains constrained by structural, national-level barriers. The article concludes that sustained progress will depend on separating the relational practices central to the model from its costlier residential infrastructure, and recommends structured employer communication protocols and documented, publicized transition stories as immediate, low-cost steps toward broader replication.