Background: During the COVID‐19 outbreak, service providers in the Netherlands had to switch towards providing remote support for people with intellectual disabilities living independently. This study aims to provide insight into the use of online support during the outbreak.Methods: We analysed quantitative data on planned and unplanned contacts between the online support service DigiContact and its service users.Results: The results indicate that the COVID‐19 outbreak and the related containment measures had a strong impact on online support use, specifically on the unplanned use of online support.Conclusion: Offering online support as a standard component of services for independently living people with intellectual disability enables service providers to be flexible and responsive towards fluctuations in both support needs and onsite support availability during a social crisis such as COVID‐19.

When it comes to disability, powerful ideas are articulated in and circulated through the media. Through framing analysis, this study examines how the media portray disability and people with disabilities in a sample of Flemish print news and entertainment magazines. The study aims to understand the dominant and alternative frames related to disability by scrutinising which aspects of reality are selected, rejected, emphasised or modified in the production of a media text. Participatory analysis of articles from 16 Belgian magazines over one year (n = 184) reveals a number of frames and counter-frames. Results indicate that the media tend to perpetuate and reinforce the stigma of those categorised as disabled as ‘Other’ and disability as one of the most frightful obstructions in one’s life, while counter-frames underlining the notion of persons with disabilities being different but not ‘abnormal’ are relatively absent.

Even though supports are a major part of the daily lives of children with special educational needs who participate in general education schools, little attention has been paid to how children experience supports. Six children and their peers who were interviewed appreciated supports because they remove restrictions in activities due to the impairment. However, their experiences also show how these positive supports can have negative psycho‐emotional repercussions, and are less focused on addressing disabling barriers. The children's accounts demonstrate the ambiguous and situated nature of supports, and the need for the children to be able to direct supports as ‘chief partners’ in the inclusion process.

The movement towards inclusion comes together with a neoliberal audit mentality whereby individuals are held responsible for the transformations. The Special Educational Needs Coordinators (SENCOs) are seen as ‘change agents’ whose task it is, to support teachers in adapting their approach to optimise the chances for children with special needs in regular schools. In this paper, we want to problematise the ‘responsibility-blame discourse’ and look differently at agency. By using a diffractive methodology based on collaborative work, in which we have used material images of the workplace of the SENCO, and read-the-data-while-thinking-with-theory, we deconstruct the individualisation of agency. The SENCOs are no longer seen as separate individual humanist subjects where agency is solely lodged in the body of an individual agent [Barad, K. 2007. Meeting the Universe Halfway: Quantum Physics and the Entanglement of Matter and Meaning. Durham: Duke University Press] but the SENCOs are part of the intra-active entanglement of multiple agencies, of an assemblage. This re-conceptualisation of agency leads to a different approach to inclusion, in which the participants in any encounter can work as part of the assemblage to develop communities capable of re-thinking practice and transforming it into a place where children with special needs become legitimate members of the school.

Within this article we will introduce some metaphors as they were developed and used by mothers and fathers we worked with: the traveller, the warrior, the builder of bridges, the discoverer, the trainer/teacher, the in‐between‐er, the manager… We will position these metaphors as tools parents are using in their confrontation with normalising discourses of disability and education. In this sense mothers and fathers of disabled children can be seen as ‘parents on the margins’ from whom we can learn a lot about parenting in general. In that sense the metaphors we will present can be situated as a meta level parents present in their continuing process of reflection on their living together with their children with disabilities. RÉSUMÉ: Nous présenterons, dans le cadre de cet article, quelques‐unes des métaphores développées et utilisées par les pères et mères avec lesquels nous avons travaillé: le voyageur, le guerrier, le bâtisseur de ponts, l'explorateur, l'entraîneur/le professeur, l'intermédiaire, le manager… Nous considérerons ces métaphores comme des outils que les parents utilisent dans leur confrontation avec les discours normalisateurs sur le handicap et l'éducation. En ce sens, les pères et mères d'enfants handicapés peuvent être vus comme des ‘parents à la marge’ auprès desquels nous avons beaucoup à apprendre en termes d'éducation des enfants en général. Les métaphores que nous présenterons peuvent, en ce sens, être situées comme un méta‐niveau que les parents présentent dans leur processus permanent de réflexion sur la vie commune avec leurs enfants handicapés. ZUSAMMENFASSUNG: In diesem Artikel werden wir einige Metaphern vorstellen, die von Müttern und Vätern entwickelt und verwendet wurden, mit denen wir gearbeitet haben: Der Reisende, der Krieger, der Brückenbauer, der Entdecker, der Trainer/Lehrer, der Zwischenhändler, der Manager… Wir werden diese Metaphern als Instrumente positionieren, die Eltern in ihrer Konfrontation mit der Normalisierung der Diskussion von Behinderung und Erziehung verwenden. In diesem Sinne können Mütter und Väter behinderter Kinder als ‘Eltern am Rande’ gesehen werden, von denen wir viel über Kindererziehung im Allgemeinen lernen können.In diesem Sinne können die von uns vorgestellten Metaphern als Meta‐Ebene situiert werden, die Eltern in ihrem kontinuierlichen Prozess der Reflexion über ihr Zusammenleben mit ihren behinderten Kindern präsentieren. RESUMEN: En este artículo introduciremos algunas de las metáforas desarrolladas y utilizadas por los padres y madres con los que hemos trabajado: el viajero, el guerrero, el arquitecto, el descubridor, el formador/profesor, el mediador, el gestor, etc. Consideraremos dichas metáforas como herramientas utilizadas por los padres y madres para afrontar discursos normalizados sobre discapacidad y educación. En este sentido, los padres y madres de niños discapacitados pueden verse como ‘padres al margen’ de los que podemos aprender mucho sobre el cuidado de los hijos en general. En este sentido, las metáforas que presentaremos pueden tomarse como un metanivel que los padres presentan en el proceso continuado de observación de su vida junto a niños con discapacidad.