‘A Feeling of Being Connected’: Friendships between People with and without Learning Difficulties

Lutfiyya, Zana Marie

doi:10.1080/02674649166780271

Cited by 23 publications

(16 citation statements)

References 3 publications

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“…Moreover, much of this research is driven by the researchers' own views of what is a ‘successful relationship’, with the views of people with IDs themselves given only scant attention. Indeed, despite Goode's (1997; p. 87) advice on the need to ‘retrieve the “subjective” view of the individual’, firsthand accounts of friendship experiences and their meanings for people with IDs are rare (Goode 1984; Lutfiyya 1991; Goode 1997; Llewellyn 1997). In effect, there has been a failure to recognize and explore the meanings which the individuals themselves attach to the friendships in their lives.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In effect, there has been a failure to recognize and explore the meanings which the individuals themselves attach to the friendships in their lives. (Lutfiyya 1991; Nunkoosing & John 1997). Results are generally measured in terms of what the researcher considers to be important relationship attributes or skills rather than what the person with IDs him or herself considers important.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The Meanings of Close Friendship: the Views of Four People with Intellectual Disabilities

Knox

Hickson

2001

Research Intellect Disabil

101

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The present study examined the views of four people with intellectual disabilities (IDs) on the relationships in their lives which they described as close friendships. A participatory approach was adopted in this study, whereby the participants were seen as experts on their own close friendship experiences and the researchers as marshallers of this expertise. To this end, two in-depth interviews were conducted with each participant. They shared their individual expertise on the close friendships in their lives. The participants delineated two distinctive types of close friendships: the 'good mate' and the girlfriend/boyfriend. The factors mediating each of these friendship types are discussed. Avenues for further research and consideration are given. These include the significance of friendships with people with IDs, intimate relationships, the impact of environmental factors on friendship enactment and friendships with older people who have IDs. Finally, the present paper argues for the value of adopting participatory approaches to research with people who have IDs.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Meanings of Close Friendship: the Views of Four People with Intellectual Disabilities

Knox

Hickson

2001

Research Intellect Disabil

101

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“…Most indicate that they feel they do not have any “real friends” (O'Brien and O'Brien 1993). One reason for this is that the mainstream structures of care lack the time, occasion, or encouragement to develop friends (Lutfiya 1991; Tronto 1993). However, negative stereotypes about people with disabilities strongly curtail the interest of people without disabilities in having relationships with them (Barham 1992).…”

Section: Historical Developments In Disability Carementioning

confidence: 99%

Negotiating Mutuality and Agency in Care-giving Relationships with Women with Intellectual Disabilities

Cushing¹,

Lewis²

2002

Hypatia

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This article is an ethnographic analysis of the mutuality that is possible in relationships between caregivers and women with intellectual disabilities who live together in LArche homes. Creating mutuality through which both parties grow and exercise agency requires that caregivers learn to negotiate delicate power relations connected to the physics of care and to reframe dominant stereotypes of disability. This helps them to support the women with intellectual disabilities to name and achieve their desires.

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“…Firstly, they are stigmatised in societies obsessed with individual achievement (Susman, 1994). Secondly, their lives are frequently segregated, revolving around increasingly scarce community services and the parental home (Lutfiyya, 1991). Thirdly, many adults living with family members lack personal mobility because their parents consider the wider community to be too dangerous, and find it difficult to meet friends outside an institutional setting (Heyman and Huckle 1993a;1993b;1995).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Alone in the crowd: How adults with learning difficulties cope with social networks problems

Heyman

Swain

Gillman

et al. 1997

Social Science & Medicine

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The relationship between perceived social support and mental health has been the subject of a large quantitative research effort. However, quantification leads to inevitable oversimplification of multi-dimensional, intersubjective and contextual features of social support. The present paper explores qualitatively the social networks of six adults with learning difficulties (adults), selected from a sample of 32 because of the strategies which they used to manage their social worlds. Three adults, who lived with parents, attempted to sustain nonconfirmed identities in the face of rejection by others. The other three adults, who were separated from their families, had adopted fatalistic attitudes, despite feeling socially isolated and unsupported. The paper argues that non-confirmed identity maintenance and fatalism are both responses to social contexts which do not support an individual's sense of self worth. The former is an attempt to manufacture positive identity in the absence of consensual alternatives. The latter involves acceptance of a social world which does not sustain valued social identities. The paper explores in detail the social contexts in which adults attempted to maintain non-confirmed identities or adopted fatalistic attitudes. The research provides a perspective on the management of behaviour defined from a frame of reference external to the individual as 'challenging' or 'problematic'. Carers saw adults who sustained non-confirmed identities as having behaviour problems. However, these problems arose from adults' attempts to maintain self-esteem in stigmatising social contexts. The fatalistic adults did not cause behaviour 'problems' for carers, but only because they had accepted lives which did not give them any sources of positive self-esteem.

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‘A Feeling of Being Connected’: Friendships between People with and without Learning Difficulties

Cited by 23 publications

References 3 publications

The Meanings of Close Friendship: the Views of Four People with Intellectual Disabilities

The Meanings of Close Friendship: the Views of Four People with Intellectual Disabilities

Negotiating Mutuality and Agency in Care-giving Relationships with Women with Intellectual Disabilities

Alone in the crowd: How adults with learning difficulties cope with social networks problems

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