Inclusive Leisure Services

In Inclusive Leisure Services (4th ed.), John Dattilo discusses the importance of including all people in leisure services, offering an educational model for learning about considerations and strategies to promote inclusive leisure services. He begins each chapter with an orientation activity including questions to stimulate reflection on the topic. He then introduces the chapter topic, followed by a rich discussion including examples from research studies and quotes from inside and outside the leisure field. To end each chapter, he offers final thoughts and discussion questions, allowing the reader to review the material, identify important points, and problem solve. He divides the book into six sections beginning with developing an awareness of ethics, inclusion, barriers, and legislation relevant to inclusive leisure services. The next three sections provide strategies to promote social, psychological, and physical leisure engagement for everyone. In the fifth section and throughout the book, Dattilo encourages readers to consider and endorse people’s culture (e.g., ethnicity, race, religion, sexual orientation), embrace their abilities, sustain healthy aging, address their economic resources, and support each individual and their family. The final section helps the reader learn about people, inclusion, and specific disabilities. Inclusive Leisure Services is a well-thought-out book based on Dattilo’s own experiences as a person within society and as a leisure service practitioner, his discoveries as a clinician and researcher, his reflections of relevant literature, and his observations of the operative assumptions within the leisure profession.