Co-designing in Australia housing for people with intellectual disability: an integrative literature review

Abstract Background This paper provides an evidence base for practice in Australia from an integrative literature review of research on co-designing housing with people with an intellectual disability. The study asks: what methods and outcomes have been reported from including people with an intellectual disability in the co-design of their housing? Method The integrative review framework described by Whitemore and Knafl (2005) was used to analyse the literature. Results The literature searches yielded 16 articles after applying inclusion and exclusion criteria. Important gaps in the literature were found relating to: co-designing with people with an intellectual disability; the co-designing of housing with people with an intellectual disability; specific frameworks or benchmarks for co-designing with people with an intellectual disability; processes on use of proxies; and on design outcomes. Conclusions Considerable work is required to explore and evaluate co-design processes in the design of housing with adults with intellectual disabilities, as well as how the outcomes of these processes are evaluated.