Deborah Carr

Quality and costs of community-based residential supports for people with mental retardation and challenging behavior

A longitudinal matched-groups design was used to examine the quality and costs of community-based residential supports to people with mental retardation and challenging behavior. Two forms of provision were investigated: noncongregate settings, where the minority of residents had challenging behavior, and congregate settings, where the majority of residents had challenging behavior. Data were collected for 25 people in each setting. We collected information through interviewing service personnel in each type of setting on the costs of service provision, the nature of support provided, and the quality of life of residents. We also conducted observations in each setting. Results suggest that noncongregate residential supports may be more cost effective than congregate residential supports.

Application of stimulus equivalence to language intervention for individuals with severe linguistic disabilities

Over the past decade, theoretical advances in our understanding of stimulus equivalence have highlighted a close relationship between the formation of equivalence classes and language. This paper highlights these theoretical concepts and describes studies which have applied an equivalence framework to different aspects of language formation in persons with intellectual and linguistic disabilities. The findings in these studies have contributed substantially to an understanding of fundamental processes that appear to underlie language development. Additionally, they have yielded some promising results in beginning to overcome problems that have beleaguered language intervention for individuals with severe linguistic disabilties. On the basis of this literature, it is suggested that an equivalence framework could have a wide range of applications in current language intervention programmes, including identification of specific linguistic defects in individuals, establishing, expanding and integrating receptive and expressive vocabularies, acquisition and use of signs or graphic symbols and promoting more sophisticated linguistic concepts, e.g. syntax and categorisation.

Teaching picture‐to‐object relations in picture‐based requesting by children with autism: a comparison between error prevention and error correction teaching procedures

BACKGROUND Children who have a combination of language and developmental disabilities with autism often experience major difficulties in learning relations between objects and their graphic representations. Therefore, they would benefit from teaching procedures that minimize their difficulties in acquiring these relations. This study compared two teaching procedures, an error prevention procedure and an error correction procedure, for teaching relations between objects and pictures. METHOD Participants were two groups of children with autism, aged between 3 and 7 years. In the context of picture-to-object requesting, one group was taught using an error correction method and the other group with an error prevention method. The measures for each child were accuracy of correspondences between taught picture and object pairs and accuracy of delayed correspondences in learning outcome tests with all combinations of object and picture pairs presented to them throughout the study. RESULTS The group receiving the error prevention-based teaching made significantly fewer errors during the teaching phases and in their learning outcome test for correspondences between all combinations of pictures and objects. CONCLUSIONS The error prevention teaching procedure would seem to provide a more efficient and ecologically valid method than the error correction procedure for teaching relations between objects and their graphic-based referents. Improvements in the methodology were suggested for providing a stronger basis for comparison between error correction and error prevention teaching methods.

The early effects of PECS on the communicative interactions of children with autism

Ten children with specific language impairment and 10 children with normal language development were asked to describe objects so that a listener could select them. Each trial targeted two out of a...

A comparison of methods of teaching graphic based referencing to children with ASD: Expansion and generalisation [Abstract]

Aim: This study investigated the knowledge base of palliative health care professionals working with people with intellectual disabilities who were dying. Method: Focus groups were held with 38 doctors and nurses in 7 specialist palliative care providers in Kent, UK. Areas of discussion included levels of professional experience in the care of people with ID, areas of concern and barriers to care provision. Results: Data showed that involvement of specialist palliative care services for people with intellectual disability is small. Specialists expressed the view that their training and knowledge of this patient group is also low and that this resulted in anxieties as to how to adequately care for this patient group. Conclusions: Specialist palliative care providers have little contact with patients with ID and know little about their specific ID needs. Whilst there may be no obvious discrim- ination against these patients there is a need for greater awareness of ID amongst staff, at all levels, so that the needs of people with ID can be addressed adequately, and appropriately.Aim: Social inclusion is de?ned as having a broad social network and participating in community based activities including paid work. Employment provides independence, empowerment and choice, enabling increased self-esteem and status helping to overcome prejudice and stigma. Government policy in the UK also stresses the importance of the bene?ts of work aiming to end discrimination faced by disabled people. A UK social care organization commissioned the Tizard Centre to compare a social enterprise to day centre provision in relation to social networks from the view point of service users. Method: Semi-structured interviews were held with ?? individuals with intellectual disabilities, ?? of whom worked in the social enterprise, the rest attending day centres across ? areas of a county in South East England. In line with service user involvement, participants were supported to disseminate results. Results: Compared to individuals attending day centres, those working in the social enterprise scored signi?cantly higher on life experience domains, selfesteem and satisfaction levels and differences in knowledge of employment rights were found. However, no differences in social network size or density were recorded. Conclusions: Social enterprises are better training grounds for future employment compared to day centres but social inclusion is still lacking.

A comparison of methods for teaching graphic-based referencing to children with ASD: levels of iconicity [Abstract]

Aim: This study investigated the knowledge base of palliative health care professionals working with people with intellectual disabilities who were dying. Method: Focus groups were held with 38 doctors and nurses in 7 specialist palliative care providers in Kent, UK. Areas of discussion included levels of professional experience in the care of people with ID, areas of concern and barriers to care provision. Results: Data showed that involvement of specialist palliative care services for people with intellectual disability is small. Specialists expressed the view that their training and knowledge of this patient group is also low and that this resulted in anxieties as to how to adequately care for this patient group. Conclusions: Specialist palliative care providers have little contact with patients with ID and know little about their specific ID needs. Whilst there may be no obvious discrim- ination against these patients there is a need for greater awareness of ID amongst staff, at all levels, so that the needs of people with ID can be addressed adequately, and appropriately.Aim: Social inclusion is de?ned as having a broad social network and participating in community based activities including paid work. Employment provides independence, empowerment and choice, enabling increased self-esteem and status helping to overcome prejudice and stigma. Government policy in the UK also stresses the importance of the bene?ts of work aiming to end discrimination faced by disabled people. A UK social care organization commissioned the Tizard Centre to compare a social enterprise to day centre provision in relation to social networks from the view point of service users. Method: Semi-structured interviews were held with ?? individuals with intellectual disabilities, ?? of whom worked in the social enterprise, the rest attending day centres across ? areas of a county in South East England. In line with service user involvement, participants were supported to disseminate results. Results: Compared to individuals attending day centres, those working in the social enterprise scored signi?cantly higher on life experience domains, selfesteem and satisfaction levels and differences in knowledge of employment rights were found. However, no differences in social network size or density were recorded. Conclusions: Social enterprises are better training grounds for future employment compared to day centres but social inclusion is still lacking.