Our main partner organization, posAbilities, is a social service provider that supports individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities. In their commitment to help each individual flourish, they realized that their supports focused on physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being, but excluded spiritual well-being. They are eager to understand how a non-religiously affiliated social service provider can include spiritual well-being and understanding in a relevant and appropriate way.

Together, posAbilities, the Burnaby Association for Community Inclusion (BACI), Kinsight, Curiko, and the CCRL are initiating a project to:

1. Understand how people with intellectual & developmental disabilities learn about and engage in spirituality,
2. Assess how agencies understand and enact their role in spiritual literacy and support, and,
3. Understand how family members feel and what they observe about their loved one’s engagement with spirituality.

Focus areas 1 and 2 of this innovative project were completed with the financial partnership of the Redleaf Foundation.

This project is a long-term exploration and collaboration. Additional details will be published and shared locally and online as the project progress. The videos and reports below document findings from phase two and three.

Preliminary findings from a literature review were shared at the Inclusion BC Conference in May 2024.

Curiko partners with CCRL’s Dr. Margie Patrick and Dr. Alice Chan at the Inclusion BC conference in Nanaimo, displaying the four ways to connect spiritually – with self, others, nature, and the transcendent (May 2024)

Overall findings thus far

Findings from our project thus far were shared and summarized on March 6, 2026 on Zoom.

Phase 2: Findings from discussion with agency staff

Report with full details from discussions with agency staff.

“Engaging in Difficult Conversations: Supporting the Spiritual Needs of People with Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities” (Dec 2025): An article in the Journal of Disability & Religion to explore more details from Phase 2.

Phase 3: Findings from discussion adults with IDD

Report with full details from discussions with adults with IDD.

Our title is drawn from the comment of a participant who explicitly rejected the perception of being “dolls that are going to break” when it came to spiritual exploration and support. Other participants acknowledged similar feelings around not being understood or supported in this area, including:

“[other people] think that people with a neurodivergent brain don’t have an understanding enough…and not grasping it [spirituality], but actually, we may be understanding at a different level than they realize” (participant)

“[misperceptions exist because of] people from the outside not having an understanding of how people are on the inside” (participant)

Participants attributed the fears around their explorations with spirituality to a society that is uncomfortable about both people with disabilities and spirituality.

Separate from this project, posAbilities commissioned three videos to share the voices of adults with IDD.  The videos were created by Rheanna Toy at Cloudstreet Media.