Feedback to care staff on how they interact with residents with intellectual impairment
| Panel: | P40 - Using Conversation Analysis to Change Institutional Practices |
| Author: | Antaki, Charles |
| Author 2: | W. M. L. Finlay |
| Author 3: | C. Walton |
| Abstract: | |
| Feedback to care staff on how they interact with residents with intellectual impairment Staff who support people with intellectual impairment have to deal with substantial problems of communication. Inevitably, they build up certain routines and practices (ways of asking questions or making suggestions) which 'get the job done'. Many of these are satisfactory in the institution's own terms, and indeed may strike the observer as commendably patient and clear. But some practices may be less good, and have unintended consequences. Bad practices may confuse the client, or induce them to change their mind unnecessarily, or in the worst case merely to acquiesce silently. We recently completed a two-year study in which we took video-recordings of everyday life in two residential homes for people with intellectual impairments (some severe, some less so). We used Conversation Analysis, bolstered by ethnographic observation, to identify a number of recurrent verbal practices that the staff used in (a) offering their clients choices, (b) getting them to take part in interactions, and (c) supporting their decisions. This paper is about our experiences in feeding back our findings to care staff and residents. On the positive side, it was clear that some care staff readily engaged in the process of looking at their own practices, and were able and willing to identify things that they acknowledged could be improved (e.g. certain repeat-question formats). On the other hand, take-up of the offer of feedback was certainly not universal. Some junior staff may have been concerned about the evaluative reading of the practices we identified, and wary of potential threats to their employment. The exercise raised important questions about CA and policy: How best to arrange things so that practitioners, without prejudice, learn from seeing themselves on video? Ought the clients be involved too? What can we realistically expect to change, and how long might it take? |
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