Fostering offers an alternative for disabled

AN alternative solution to placing people with severe intellectual disabilities into institutionalised care services is to recruit professional foster families to provide a real home and real relationships to people.

A project, spearheaded by the Brothers of Charity in Galway, studied the experiences of 46 participants with intellectual disabilities across the six Brothers of Charity regions.

Headed up by Dr Brian McClean, a psychologist with the organisation, the project explored options such as professional neighbours, remote support and supervision and unpaid housemates to examine whether people with intellectual disabilities can form real lifestyles without recourse to expensive institutionalised care services.

During the course of the project 20 participants moved to a life of their choosing within 15 months of the project.

Twenty six are still waiting. The study also illustrated how seemingly innocuous decisions by senior managers, often far removed from the lived experiences of the people who use services, can have devastating effect on the quality and direction of people’s lives.

It shows there is enormous variation in the quality of service that people receive, and this reflects variation in staff performance.

“Services were found to be most effective when decisions about people’s lives were made at the point of impact between frontline staff and the people they serve. The role of the manager is to articulate clear expectations for staff, not to take decisions for people with disabilities. Services can never be person-centred if decisions are made by people in managerial positions far away,” the report concludes.

Funded by Pobal (a not-for-profit intermediary company that works on behalf of Government to support communities and local agencies toward achieving social inclusion, reconciliation and equality), the study says large residential settings are associated with less choice, less community participation, fewer friendships poorer quality of life than community-based settings.

But it also says that smaller, so-called community-based group homes are not much better.

“Because group homes are organised by service agencies it may be inevitable that they recreate the institutional care practices of larger institutions. This study found that people who live with their families and people supported to live in their own homes, with “drop in” support, have the best outcomes.”