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FAO: Managers of residential and day-care services for service users who have an Intellectual Disability.
I’m a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh’s Social Work Department. My research concerns the role played by Disability Support Workers in supporting service users to modify any unacceptable sexual behaviours they may display. The study includes a comparison between the role of the workers in areas across Scotland and those in Australia, specifically Melbourne. The comparison is based on having similar population size, being at a comparable stage of introducing care in the community (as opposed to housing people in institutions), and having access to different support measures from health professionals.
Why am I specifically researching the worker’s role in connection to service user’s sexual behaviour? Well a lack of sex education and the laissez-faire attitude prevalent in some institutions means that service users’ sexual behaviour can be problematic and so a barrier to their full integration into their local communities. Since workers have the daily care of these individuals they surely have a role to play in the modification of such behaviours yet this (and their role in many other scenarios) is under-researched; a situation I wish to redress.
When it is thought necessary, workers in Scotland can call in the services of the Community Learning Disability Nurse but recently there has been talk of discontinuing this role; a situation that has existed in Australia for over 10 years now with the closing of the Intellectual Disability Nurse Register. It is therefore a further aim of my research to find out how this has affected the role of the Disability Support Worker in situations where the service user’s sexual behaviour is unacceptable.
I would therefore like to be able to approach Disability Support Workers in Melbourne to ask them to volunteer for interview and it is for this reason that I am calling on service managers to ask if they would be willing to ask their staff on my behalf. I would like to speak to any worker who has current or past experience of the situations I’ve described. Their experiences can include those when multi-agency working was required, and also, when it was not.
I’ll be in Melbourne from 20th April until the 19th of June to do the interviews. If you think you would be able to assist me in this then please contact me at my email address: s0672056@sms.ed.ac.uk for further details.
Marilyn Sangster
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