Background: Intellectual disability (ID) is a developmental disorder that causes considerably below-average intellectual performance and adaptive behaviour. In the context of the present study, families raising a child with ID are reported to experience multiple challenges that appear not to be well documented in Pakistan. Methods and procedures: Pakistan, which was conducted in Karachi, Pakistan, followed participatory action research, in which the researcher and participants examined their existing experiences of informal social support and then created, implemented, and evaluated actions to strengthen this informal social support. A total of five families (n = 25) participated in the study. These participating families comprise parents, siblings, and significant others, i.e., aunts, uncles, and grandparents, living with the child with ID. Families with children with ID were selected through a school for children with ID who are under 12 years old. This qualitative action research was conducted in two distinct parts, i.e., a) exploratory part and b) action part. This paper presents the findings of the first exploratory part of the study. Aim: The exploratory phase aimed to explore and examine the experiences and challenges families may experience with informal social support while caring for a child with an intellectual disability in Karachi, Pakistan. Findings: Parents often sacrifice their personal needs and aspirations for their children, leading to decreased tolerance and anxiety. Lack of communication, support, and assistance from family members is another significant issue. Stigmatisation and discrimination from school, relatives, and friends can cause depression and distress. The study emphasises the need for a unified and coordinated approach to support and care. Religious beliefs, siblings, and close friends provide comfort and well-being. When parents manage to connect with similar families, they have the opportunity to express a collective commitment to caregiving. Conclusion: To strengthen the situation, families propose enhancing intimacy and competency within homes and taking action at the governmental level. Governments must provide appropriate services, such as nurses supporting families, support groups, and religious traditions, to promote acceptance and holistic development for intellectually disabled children.
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The Social Support Act came into effect on 1 January 2007. The purpose of the new legislation is to enable citizens who are dependent on the support of the Municipality and those living around them to be able to live independently for as long as possible. Organizing informal care is one of the main targets of this policy. In the realization of this act several assumptions about informal care giving were implied. In this paper three of them are examined. The first assumption is that neighbourly cohesion will lead to exchanging neighbourly support. On the other hand it is assumed that a lack of neighbourly cohesion impedes neighbourly support. The second assumption is that there is an imminent shortfall in the supply of informal care. The third assumption is that healthy people (are expected to) help the vulnerable and that they have to be stimulated to do so. The findings are based on qualitative in-depth interviews, conducted in a small Dutch neighbourhood in Eindhoven, called Drents Dorp. It is argued that all three assumptions need revision in order that informal care policy can be more effective. This study shows that the relationship between neighbourhood cohesion and informal care is not clear cut. Neighbourliness is individualized, but this doesn't mean that neighbours don't support each other: they do, but on an individual one-to-one basis. Furthermore, the most vulnerable inhabitants are not reached by social interventions aimed at enhancing social cohesion. The assumed shortfall in the supply of informal care turns out to be a shortage in the demand of informal care. Due to their fear of dependency and pursuit of autonomy and independence, people hesitate to ask for support. This is far more an impediment for informal care than the alleged shortfall in supply. The assumption that the strong will support the vulnerable also needs adjustment. At least an important part of the exchange of support takes place between vulnerable people mutually.
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AchtergrondInformele ouderlijke steun wordt gezien als kansrijke interventie voor het reduceren van opvoedstress. Er is echter weinig bekend over hoe relaties tussen ouders met en zonder opvoedstress zich ontwikkelen in opvoedingssituaties waarbij de ene partij ondersteuning geeft en de andere partij ondersteuning ontvangt. Kennis over bevorderende en belemmerende factoren kan helpen om informele ouderlijke steun verder vorm te geven.MethodenWe hebben gedurende een kwalitatief fenomenologisch onderzoek steunouders (N = 16) en vraagouders (N = 12) in een semigestructureerd interview gevraagd naar hun ervaringen met informele sociale steun in het informele opvoedingsondersteuningsprogramma Buurtgezinnen.nl.ResultatenBevorderende factoren zijn het opbouwen van vertrouwen in de startfase, het bewaren van enige sociale afstand, het erkennen van verschillen wat betreft opvoedstress, financiële mogelijkheden, opleidingsniveau en de normen en waarden die worden gehanteerd in de opvoeding. Ten slotte is het voorkómen van een grote disbalans tussen geven en nemen ook een belangrijke bevorderende factor. Belemmerende factoren zijn een gebrekkig zicht op de leefwereld van de ander, handelings- en vraagverlegenheid en ongevraagde steun.ConclusiesVerschillende factoren bevorderen het geven en ontvangen van informele sociale steun. Tevens is een aantal belemmerende ervaringen te onderscheiden, op grond waarvan aanbevelingen worden gedaan om de onderlinge relatie verder te optimaliseren.--BackgroundInformal parental support is increasingly seen as a promising intervention for reducing parenting stress. A better understanding of the facilitating and inhibiting factors in the relationships between parents who provide informal support and those who receive informal support could help efforts to successfully implement informal parental support.MethodsWe adopted a qualitative phenomenological research approach using semi-structured interviews with 28 parents who either provided (N = 16) or received (N = 12) informal support. The interviews contained questions about their experiences with the informal parenting support programme Buurtgezinnen.nl.ResultsPerceived facilitating factors included building trust in the start-up phase, keeping a certain social distance and acknowledging differences in terms of socioeconomic status, norms and values, or parenting stress. Last but not least, avoiding a serious imbalance in providing and receiving help is also a facilitating factor. Inhibiting factors included a lack of insight into each other’s world, reluctance to reach out or ask for help, and unsolicited support.ConclusionsSeveral relational factors can facilitate successful informal parental support. The identified inhibiting factors led to recommendations for improving informal support programmes.
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Dutch society faces major future challenges putting populations’ health and wellbeing at risk. An ageing population, increase of chronic diseases, multimorbidity and loneliness lead to more complex healthcare demands and needs and costs are increasing rapidly. Urban areas like Amsterdam have to meet specific challenges of a growing and super divers population often with a migration background. The bachelor programs and the relating research groups of social work and occupational therapy at the Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences innovate their curricula and practice-oriented research by multidisciplinary and cross-domain approaches. Their Centres of Expertise foster interprofessional research and educational innovation on the topics of healthy ageing, participation, daily occupations, positive health, proximity, community connectedness and urban innovation in a social context. By focusing on senior citizens’ lives and by organizing care in peoples own living environment. Together with their networks, this project aims to develop an innovative health promotion program and contribute to the government missions to promote a healthy and inclusive society. Collaboration with stakeholders in practice based on their urgent needs has priority in the context of increasing responsibilities of local governments and communities. Moreover, the government has recently defined social base as being the combination of citizen initiatives, volunteer organizations , caregivers support, professional organizations and support of vulnerable groups. Kraktie Foundations is a community based ethno-cultural organization in south east Amsterdam that seeks to research and expand their informal services to connect with and build with professional care organizations. Their aim coincides with this project proposal: promoting health and wellbeing of senior citizens by combining intervention, participatory research and educational perspectives from social work, occupational therapy and hidden voluntary social work. With a boundary crossing innovation of participatory health research, education and Kraktie’s work in the community we co-create, change and innovate towards sustainable interventions with impact.
Every organisation needs to have organised Company Emergency Response (CER) staff. The training of CER must combine knowledge acquisition with knowledge application in performing physical procedures and demonstrating skills. However, current training does not secure well-prepared CER-staff in the long term. Playful learning is that a more engaging type of training can be created which combines knowledge with skills training. But while social interactions can strongly and positively impact learning as well as motivation, this is not easily facilitated within digital learning environments Two questions are particularly important for playful learning designers: • How can playful learning make use of the combination of digital and non-digital working mechanisms to foster learning and motivation? • How can trainees learn and play together if they are not always present at the same time in within the same learning environment? The saying at IJsfontein is that individually you can progress, but only together you can persevere. The aim of this collaboration with Hanze University of Applied Sciences Groningen is to provide playful learning designers with concrete and reusable design guidelines for leveraging social processes in playful learning across the digital/non-digital boundary. As such, we seek to contribute to the practically-oriented design knowledge available to the creative industry through design research that is grounded in practice. This type of design knowledge can only be fully developed when evaluated across different contexts of application. Therefore, we will form a consortium of partners from the creative industry to write a joint follow-up funding application
