Intermediary, supporter or neutral escort. The role of assistants in lifelong learning of people with intellectual disabilities who require more intensive support

Abstract

People with intellectual disabilities requiring more intensive support have had limited access to education and few opportunities to apply their learning in daily life. It is predicted that the percentage of those able to benefit from an assistant provided by their support service throughout lifelong learning will continue to grow, and it is thus necessary to better define the role of assistants in relation to the lifelong learning of disabled people. The purpose of this article is to present a research project with the goal of gaining insight into how assistants envision this role. The participants in this study were six assistants who had experience of attending courses at Fjölmennt, adult education centre with the people they assisted. The people who received assistance utilized augmentative methods of communication and needed intensive support from day to day. The interviews were carried out from March 2018 until January 2019. The findings suggest that the assistants mostly shape their roles themselves; that is, they receive limited instructions from their supervisor and the teacher at the adult education centre. The research revealed the ways in which the participants developed their positions, and three distinct types of assistantship roles were identified, referred to in this study as the intermediary, the supporter, and the neutral escorter. The role of the intermediary is based on the idea that the assistant knows the service user better than the teacher and can take on the role of an interpreter, which makes the lesson more successful. The intermediary also offers guidance to the teacher, based on the service users’ life experiences relevant to their lessons. The role of the supporter is different and mostly focused on the service user. The supporter is present during lessons, mainly to provide the service user with a sense of security. This role demands a close relationship between the assistant and the service user and can have a positive influence on the service user’s learning. The neutral escorter neither supports the service user nor the teacher during the lesson. His role is to transport the service user to the centre and assist with daily life activities. Sometimes the neutral escorter waits outside the classroom during the lesson. The neutral escorter will intervene if the service user’s behaviour becomes challenging or threatening but neither takes part in preventing this from occurring nor analysing what the service user is trying to communicate with his behaviour. Thus the service user might lose a chance to take part in a lesson if the assistant takes on the role of the neutral escorter. What influenced which roles the personal assistants adopted was based on factors such as how they viewed the role of the teacher and their own ideas about being assistants and about the importance of lifelong learning for the people they assisted. If they viewed the teacher as an equal, the personal assistants took on the role of the intermediary and there was much focus on cooperation and a mutual flow of information. Those who viewed the teacher as a role model were eager to learn and tried to adopt to the practices in the classroom but which role the assistant took on depended on whether the teacher was aware of his own function as a role model. Those who viewed the teacher as the leader, or the boss of the lesson took on the role of neutral escorters or were at least less eager to speak up for the service user as intermediaries or supporters. Therefore, the teacher’s attitude and approach to the service user and their assistants can influence how the assistants carry out their support during the lessons. The findings also suggest that since the assistants shape their role mostly themselves; their own ideas about being assistants will influence their support. The findings particularly suggest that a close relationship between the assistant and the service user will influence the support in a positive way. From these results it may be concluded that guidelines on the assistants’ role need improvement and clarification along with teachers’ awareness of their own role in their cooperation with the assistants. Improvements need to be made in emphasizing the importance of lifelong learning and of the transfer of learning for people with intellectual disabilities requiring more intensive support. The results of this study suggest that the introduction of an active support approach in residential services could facilitate the role of assistants who support disabled people in their lifelong learning. This would have a positive effect on the opportunities of people with intellectual disabilities requiring more intensive support towards receiving an education equal to that of others.