Developing practice-near social work research to explore the emotional worlds of severely learning disabled adolescents in ‘transition’ and their families

Abstract

This paper aims to make a contribution to the development of practice-near research through discussion of a project which explores the experiences of a socially marginalized group -young people with severe learning disabilities. Psychoanalytically informed infant observation is adapted as a research method for observing these young people in the family home. The paper discusses the rationale for the development and adaption of the research method in the process of observing. The discussion focuses on the key themes of understanding the quality of developing subjectivity and the ways that young people, adults and siblings coped with the often stressful aspects in the home. The article concludes with the implications for policy and practice and proposes that methodologies such as this are needed to capture the complexity of the lives and experiences of these service users and their families.

Expectations of Greek Parents about Employment Opportunities for their Child with Learning Disabilities: Implications for Social Workers

“…Social workers are uniquely prepared to see historical as well as micro to macro challenges and solutions to unemployment for the disabled (Mackelprang & Clute, 2009). Therefore, the profession of social work is important for services for people with LD and their families (Hingley-Jones, 2009). …”

‘How families live …’ – the views and experiences of parent-carers who provide family placements to intellectual disability nursing students

“…These fields range from considering the impact of structural disadvantage facing service users and their families, through to capturing inner world, emotional experiences which impact upon people’s lives. (Hingley-Jones, 2009: 413/414)…”

“…These fields range from considering the impact of structural disadvantage facing service users and their families, through to capturing inner world, emotional experiences which impact upon people’s lives. (Hingley-Jones, 2009: 413/414)By allowing the parents/carers to describe in their own words, the daily trials of caring we were better able to then move on to elicit information about their views and experiences of the family placement scheme. Here, we adopted a sympathetic stance via the interview schedule and so were able to ask open-ended questions which prompted a detailed account of experiences of caring and how this played out in practice when students became involved in the household.…”

‘Reflections on a birthday’: An auto-ethnographic account of caring for a child with a learning disability

“…As practitioners, we also try to understand the feelings that may accompany these life stages, not least those associated with transitions – for example, grief, anger and guilt (Seltzer and Krauss, 1989; Walker and Walker, 1998), perhaps not the usual panoply of emotional responses associated with what many would (rightly) see as normative rites of passage. Practitioners also need to forge a good relationship with both the family and the young person with a learning disability in order to successfully support them and allow people to express their (real) feelings, beliefs, hopes and fears (Hingley-Jones, 2009; Maddison and Beresford, 2012) and this is of particular importance at times such as these. As the parent, these attributes take on a different hue.…”