Work

Offering choices to people with intellectual disabilities: an interactional study

Year: 2008

Type: article

Abstract: BACKGROUND: At the level of policy recommendation, it is agreed that people with intellectual impairments ought to be given opportunities to make choices in their lives; indeed, in the UK, the Mental Capacity Act of 2005 enshrines such a right in law. However, at the level of practice, there is a dearth of evidence as to how choices are actually offered in everyday situations, which must hinder recommendations to change. METHOD: This qualitative interactional study, based on video recordings in British residential homes, combines ethnography with the fine-grained methods of Conversation Analysis. RESULTS: We identify six conversational practices that staff use to offer choices to residents with intellectual disabilities. CONCLUSIONS: We describe the unwanted consequences of some of these practices, and how the institutional imperative to solicit clear and decisive choice may sometimes succeed only in producing the opposite.

Source: Journal of Intellectual Disability Research

DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2788.2008.01101.x

Authors: C. Antaki, W. Finlay, C. Walton, L. Pate

Institutions: Loughborough University, University of Surrey, Lancaster University

Language: English

Topic: Disability Rights and Representation

Subfield: Safety Research

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Good health and well-being, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: green

Funder: Economic and Social Research Council