Friendship or Facilitation: People with Learning Disabilities and Their Paid Carers

Abstract

This article compares the composition and characteristics of the social networks of 14 people with learning disabilities with those of 24 of their paid support staff. In doing so the article not only establishes the differences in the diversity, durability and density of each group's social set, but highlights the disparity in perspective that the service users and the support staff have about their shared relationships. This is followed by a sociological discussion of why those with learning disabilities perceive their support staff as friends, while the support staff seldom consider the service users in this way, preferring to view themselves as facilitators to these individuals’ friendships. The article concludes by discussing the consequences of the staff and service users’ differing perspectives about their relationships, in terms of the tensions it generates in staff about their caring role and the effect it may have upon those with learning disabilities’ broader social inclusion.

14. Methodological challenges

“…Research with so-called vulnerable groups makes examination of this dimension paramount; rapport-building requires particular skill and needs to be monitored (Cameron & Murphy, 2007). People with learning difficulties lack social networks and these are made up more of professionals than friends (Pockney, 2006). Researchers going into people's homes to conduct research, Stalker (1998) argues, need to be particularly sensitive to this; researchers going into people's homes as self-invited guests could be perceived as being intrusive but are actually more likely to be misconstrued as being their friends.…”

“…Instead, they argue, ethnographers need to hold onto the concept of people (whatever their impairment) as competent social actors who may make decisions about whether to communicate and with whom, being 'the final gatekeepers to their worlds ' (p.210). This message in reinforced by Pockney's (2006) ethnographic study of the friendships of people with learning disabilities using participantobservation, social diaries, photographs, life-mapping and discussion and by Nind, Flewitt and Payler's (2007) visual ethnography of young children with learning difficulties making sense of their different settings.…”

Should social care staff be Facebook friends with the people they support?

“…Indeed, a proportion of the gossip that many of us enjoy from time to time consists of discussion of how third parties overstep the boundaries we all erect to contain and define our friendships. Meanwhile, Pockney (2006) found that most of her sample of adults with learning disabilities considered their support staff to be their friends too, and their support staff were unsure how to respond. This may indeed be a problem, but it is unlikely to be solved by banning one medium of communication and leaving everything else unchanged.…”

Friendship and Adults With Profound Intellectual and Multiple Disabilities and English Disability Policy

“…Among social scientists and philosophers of the contemporary English context, it seems to be a matter of consensus that what distinguishes friendship from other kinds of social relationships is the presence of “reciprocity” and “choice.” Unlike kinship, which is based on obligation, in friendship “ we choose our friends and, reciprocally, they choose us ” (Pahl, 2000, p. 13). It is a relationship of equality, based on a balance of give and take (Pockney, 2006). However, we established earlier that some adults with profound disabilities lack the capacity to act purposively and others may be severely restricted in exercising it.…”

“…The literature on friendship contains other notions that initially seem equally incompatible with the conceptualization of adults with profound disabilities outlined at the start of this article. For example, intimacy, the state of deep knowing and being known, is also often identified as a defining feature of friendship (Firth & Rapley, 1990; Jamieson, 1998; Pockney, 2006; Spencer & Pahl, 2006). Vernon (2006a) argues that intimacy is achieved primarily through talk.…”