Children with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour: An IPA study exploring how key stakeholders construct meanings around challenging behaviour and how this affects people’s relationships and experiences of giving and receiving help
Year: 2016
Type: dissertation
Abstract: This multi-perspectival Interpretive Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) study \nexplored how people in the ‘networks of concern’ talked about how they tried to \nmake sense of the challenging behaviours of four children with severe learning \ndisabilities. The study also aimed to explore what affected relationships \nbetween people. \nThe study focussed on 4 children through interviewing their mothers, their \nteachers and the Camhs Learning Disability team members who were working \nwith them. Two fathers also joined part of the interviews. All interviews were \nconducted separately using a semi-structured approach. IPA allowed both a \nconsideration of the participant’s lived experiences and ‘objects of concern’ and \na deconstruction of the multiple contexts of people’s lives, with a particular \nfocus on disability. The analysis rendered five themes: the importance of love \nand affection, the difficulties, and the differences of living with a challenging \nchild, the importance of being able to make sense of the challenges and the \nvalue of good relationships between people. Findings were interpreted through \nthe lens of CMM (Coordinated Management of Meaning), which facilitated a \nsystemic deconstruction and reconstruction of the findings. The research found \nthat making sense of the challenges was a key concern for parents. Sharing \nmeanings were important for people’s relationships with each other, including \nemploying diagnostic and behavioural narratives. The importance of context is \nalso highlighted including a consideration of how societal views of disability \nhave an influence on people in the ‘network of concern’ around the child. \nA range of systemic approaches, methods and techniques are suggested as \none way of improving services to these children and their families. It is \nsuggested that adopting a ‘both/and’ position is important in such work - both \napplying evidence based approaches and being alert to and exploring the \ndifferent ways people try and make sense of the children’s challenges. \nImplications for practice included helping professionals be alert to their \nconstructions and professional narratives, slowing the pace with families, \nstaying close to the concerns of families and addressing network issues.
Author: Hilary Helen Howell
Language: English
Subfield: Clinical Psychology
Field: Psychology
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2491457895