Inclusive education

Ken Pike has given over 40 years to helping enhance the lives of people with intellectual disabilities and their families by advocating for change to inclusive education.

Inclusion Canada presented Pike with the Distinguished Leadership Award – Inclusive Education for his impactful work, for which he is honoured.

Pike is still involved with Inclusion New Brunswick and Inclusion Canada on a part-time basis, working on some policy issues. He is otherwise retired as of April 2024.

Pike started his career as a lawyer. While in his law practice, he was asked to work on a case in the mid-1980s involving a Charter of Rights claim against the Government of New Brunswick for failing to include children with an intellectual disability in the regular school system.

Although the case did not go through the court system, it is often cited as one of the catalysts for the introduction of Bill 85 in 1986.

“That claim and other advocacy led to what’s referred to as Bill 85, which was the changing of our educational laws to require the education of children with disabilities in the regular education system,” said Pike.

In the following years, Pike began working as a Director of Social Policy for the New Brunswick Association for Community Living, now commonly known as Inclusion New Brunswick.

“It was one of those things that you know when you see it, and in terms of career, it just seemed like this was the thing I was meant to do,” he said.

Pike’s role with Inclusion N.B. focused on law reform and policy improvements covering a broad range of issues, ensuring people had the best chance at an inclusive life, whether at school, in the community, or in employment.

“In the context of education, I spent a lot of time getting the right policies in place and then promoting ways in which those policies can be effectively implemented,” he said.

Pike experienced the issue of inclusion from a young age, not for himself, but for his late brother, John.

“I had an older brother with Down syndrome. He was about 10 years older, so I’ve been around the inclusion issue for many years,” said Pike.

“My brother grew up in a fairly large family here in Saint John, and he was always part of our family and our community. Back in those days, he would have gone to a separate school, and he didn’t have the opportunities for the inclusive life kids have now. Still, he managed to carve out a nice life for himself. I was blessed to be able to learn from him that his disability really didn’t define who he was.”

Pike says John was a role model for him. The two shared a very close relationship until John passed in September 2008.

“He learned some qualities as an individual, and his respect for other people taught me how to live my life,” said Pike.

Not long after his brother’s passing, Pike accepted the New Brunswick Human Rights Award at the end of 2008, which he says was a way to pay tribute to John. “I think he would have been pretty proud,” he said.

Pike lends his prominence with Inclusion N.B. to others in the organization, claiming he was the beneficiary of good visionaries who saw the need for and importance of working on systemic issues over a long period.

“There were a lot of strong parent advocates who saw the need. They were good at a lot of the individual advocacies on behalf of their family members, but I think they very clearly saw the need for someone to be working on that broader systemic change and how government policies are shaped.”

“I think ultimately they saw the benefit of having somebody with my type of background – both as a family member and as a lawyer – to work on their behalf,” he explained.

Pike says he was fortunate to have worked on several critical issues, such as the right of children with an intellectual disability to be in the regular education system. Beyond that, Pike and his team were able to make significant gains around access to disability supports based on individual needs, so that it was not necessary to live in group or congregate settings. “We see more and more people now having a chance to live in their own places in their community.”

There has also been work done around employment and access to post-secondary education. Pike says people used to come out of high school and go into a sheltered workshop, but now they leave high school and enter into regular employment for real pay.

One of the recent changes that Pike said he participated in was altering decision-making laws in early 2024. These changes recognize that people with an intellectual disability have a right to support in making decisions that affect their lives.

“We have probably the most progressive decision-making laws that affect adults in the country,” Pike explained.

However, progress does not come without challenges. According to Pike, some remain.

“I think there are still challenges that relate to putting good policy into good practice. It’s one thing to have a solid law or policy in place on a number of issues, but how do we make that a reality in people’s day-to-day lives?” elaborated Pike.

There is one issue that Pike says he would have loved to solve before his retirement: the issue of poverty.

“For those who have to rely on our provincial social assistance programs, they don’t have a whole lot of money to live on. We would today say that those individuals with disabilities live in deep poverty. Sometimes you see people ending up on the streets and becoming a part of our unhoused population. We still have significant work to do, especially in the area of making sure that people have access to good quality, inclusive housing, where they have a chance to live a typical life in the community,” he said.

Society can often underestimate people, according to Pike. “When we give people the tools they need and the right to be involved in decisions about their lives, they can go a long way. Some can tend to make false accusations about where people belong, that’s the sort of hurdle to keep working on, is to have positive expectations of what life and community can be for people.”