Background: The prevalence of Substance Use Disorder (SUD) in people with Mild IntellectualDisability and Borderline Intellectual Functioning (MID-BIF) is high and evidence-basedtreatment programs are scarce. The present study describes the development of a personalised SUD treatment for people with MID-BIF.Method: The personalised SUD treatment is developed according to the steps of the InterventionMapping approach, based on literature review, theoretical intervention methods, clinicalexperience and consultation with experts in the field of addiction and intellectual disability care.Results: We developed a treatment manual called Take it Personal!+. Take it Personal!+ aims toreduce substance use, is based on motivational interviewing and cognitive behavior therapyand personalised based on the client’s personality profile. Furthermore, an mHealth application supports the treatment sessions.Conclusion: Take it Personal!+ is the first personalised SUD treatment for individuals with MID-BIF.Future research should test the effectiveness of Take it Personal!+ in reducing SU.
Background Little is known about the nature and reactions to sexual abuse of children with intellectual disability (ID). The aim was to fill this gap. Method Official reports of sexual abuse of children with ID in state care were examined (N = 128) and compared with children without ID (N = 48). Results Clear signs of penetration or genital touching by male (adolescent) peers or (step/foster) fathers were found in most ID reports. Victims often received residential care and disclosed themselves. Type of perpetrator seemed to affect the nature and reaction to the abuse. Cases of children with and without ID seemed to differ in location and reports to police. Conclusions Screening of (foster)homes seems crucial. Residential facilities should find a balance between independence of children and protection. Care providers should be trained in addressing sexual issues and sexual education, accounting for different types of perpetrators (peers/adults). Uniform reporting guidelines are needed.
The ageing of people with intellectual disabilities, with associated morbidity like dementia, calls for new types of care. Person-centered methods may support care staff in providing this, an example being Dementia Care Mapping (DCM). DCM has been shown to be feasible in ID-care. We examined the experiences of ID-professionals in using DCM. We performed a mixed-methods study, using quantitative data from care staff (N = 136) and qualitative data (focus-groups, individual interviews) from care staff, group home managers and DCM-in-intellectual disabilities mappers (N = 53). ageing, dementia, Dementia Care Mapping, intellectual disability, mixed-methods, personcentred care
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Everyone has the right to participate in society to the best of their ability. This right also applies to people with a visual impairment, in combination with a severe or profound intellectual and possibly motor disability (VISPIMD). However, due to their limitations, for their participation these people are often highly dependent on those around them, such as family members andhealthcare professionals. They determine how people with VISPIMD participate and to what extent. To optimize this support, they must have a good understanding of what people with disabilities can still do with their remaining vision.It is currently difficult to gain insight into the visual abilities of people with disabilities, especially those with VISPIMD. As a professional said, "Everything we can think of or develop to assess the functional vision of this vulnerable group will help improve our understanding and thus our ability to support them. Now, we are more or less guessing about what they can see.Moreover, what little we know about their vision is hard to communicate to other professionals”. Therefore, there is a need for methods that can provide insight into the functional vision of people with VISPIMD, in order to predict their options in daily life situations. This is crucial knowledge to ensure that these people can participate in society to their fullest extent.What makes it so difficult to get this insight at the moment? Visual impairments can be caused by a range of eye or brain disorders and can manifest in various ways. While we understand fairly well how low vision affects a person's abilities on relatively simple visual tasks, it is much more difficult to predict this in more complex dynamic everyday situations such asfinding your way or moving around during daily activities. This is because, among other things, conventional ophthalmic tests provide little information about what people can do with their remaining vision in everyday life (i.e., their functional vision).An additional problem in assessing vision in people with intellectual disabilities is that many conventional tests are difficult to perform or are too fatiguing, resulting in either no or the wrong information. In addition to their visual impairment, there is also a very serious intellectual disability (possibly combined with a motor impairment), which makes it even more complex to assesstheir functional vision. Due to the interplay between their visual, intellectual, and motor disabilities, it is almost impossible to determine whether persons are unable to perform an activity because they do not see it, do not notice it, do not understand it, cannot communicate about it, or are not able to move their head towards the stimulus due to motor disabilities.Although an expert professional can make a reasonable estimate of the functional possibilities through long-term and careful observation, the time and correct measurement data are usually lacking to find out the required information. So far, it is insufficiently clear what people with VZEVMB provoke to see and what they see exactly.Our goal with this project is to improve the understanding of the visual capabilities of people with VISPIMD. This then makes it possible to also improve the support for participation of the target group. We want to achieve this goal by developing and, in pilot form, testing a new combination of measurement and analysis methods - primarily based on eye movement registration -to determine the functional vision of people with VISPIMD. Our goal is to systematically determine what someone is responding to (“what”), where it may be (“where”), and how much time that response will take (“when”). When developing methods, we take the possibilities and preferences of the person in question as a starting point in relation to the technological possibilities.Because existing technological methods were originally developed for a different purpose, this partly requires adaptation to the possibilities of the target group.The concrete end product of our pilot will be a manual with an overview of available technological methods (as well as the methods themselves) for assessing functional vision, linked to the specific characteristics of the target group in the cognitive, motor area: 'Given that a client has this (estimated) combination of limitations (cognitive, motor and attention, time in whichsomeone can concentrate), the order of assessments is as follows:' followed by a description of the methods. We will also report on our findings in a workshop for professionals, a Dutch-language article and at least two scientific articles. This project is executed in the line: “I am seen; with all my strengths and limitations”. During the project, we closely collaborate with relevant stakeholders, i.e. the professionals with specific expertise working with the target group, family members of the persons with VISPIMD, and persons experiencing a visual impairment (‘experience experts’).
