Search results

The purpose of this paper is to draw upon a range of material to improve the understanding of disengagement with everyday life, by some individuals who have learning disabilities and mental health difficulties. Illustrative incidents from historical clinical cases are utilised, to consider whether this reframing may enhance the interpretation of presenting behaviours.

Key recurring themes within transpersonal literature were reviewed, relevant to adults with behaviour indicating a degree of disengagement from everyday life. These were grouped into Physical Realm, Psychosocial Realm and Realm of Being. Illustrative examples of behaviour are reviewed and re-interpreted within this framework.

These examples generated plausible interpretations for the presenting behaviours within this framework of the Three Realms. These interpretations support a fresh understanding of the quality of the individual's inner experience. This paper suggests a potential framework to consider the way in which some individuals may experience a different quality of consciousness than the usual.

Use of the Three Realms for behaviour interpretation should result into a more empathetic and client-centred approach that could reduce the need for aversive approaches, lessening risk for the client and any employing organisation. The identification of behaviours that signal participation in the Realm of Being could be defined and evaluated with the potential to be used to inform the nature and content of the support provided.

This paper, rooted in clinical examples, offers an original synthesis with reasons to include the immaterial realm in the perspective of the human condition. This could benefit people with substantial episodes of disconnection from the Physical Realm and everyday culture and those who support them.

This chapter offers a critical evaluation of the disability scholarship of Michael Oliver, a leading developer of the British social model of disability, and Peter Singer, a philosopher whose utilitarian ethics excludes some persons with intellectual disabilities from full moral status. Through a critique of the simplified accounts of disability employed by these two very different scholars, this chapter explores the ontology and the moral significance of disability. The importance of the ontology of disability in relation to inclusion is also discussed.

This paper describes the aims, roles and functions of ethics committees in Dutch service organisations for people with learning disabilities. The significance of ethical advice for professional practice depends not only on the role of an ethics committee, but also, and primarily, on the theoretical frameworks used. Ethics committees can be important partners for professionals in their search for responsible practice and a well‐considered moral response. Such a partnership has the potential to inspire new ways of showing respect to service users.

We believe that the inclusion of people with disabilities (PWDs) in the workplace, the provision of the right of PWDs to decent work involves an exemplary field of social issues that provides a firm foundation for exploring the nature and interplay of (EU and local) policies and also it could be interesting to relate this to the policy changes of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR).

In our chapter we decided to have a look at these relationships on a national level, but we believe that the points raised reach far beyond the borders of Hungary and Central and Eastern Europe.

First, we provide a short summary of the development of European and Hungarian policies and regulations considering the employment of PWDs and their connection to the development of EU level and Hungarian CSR policies. We identify three phases in both topics and highlight their parallel developmental shift at the beginning of the 2000s. Second, we highlight the very recent governmental policies of CSR and employment/inclusion (especially the rehabilitation contribution). Third, we argue that whilst PWDs as a topic is relevant in the declarations, guidelines and policies of international and national organizations, the rights of PWDs, their inclusion in society and the world of work are neither among the current topics of enterprises’ and corporates’ CSR practices nor in scientific debate.

Based on two case studies, we show some good practices and formalize general learning points, opportunities and the potential risks of employing PWDs as part of CSR activities.

Randomised controlled trials (RCTs) are considered the bedrock of evidence‐based practice. However, they raise important issues about participant recruitment and the ethics of group allocation. In this article we report relevant literature on how participants with learning disabilities and other stakeholders experience RCTs. Five quantitative studies have been published, one reporting on the views of people with learning disabilities and the remainder on carers' views. Despite the methodological limitations of the studies, carers appear to have a positive experience of RCT participation, and people with learning disabilities are able to understand certain aspects of research methods. We conclude that stakeholders are not hostile to RCTs, but the therapeutic misconception may affect their experiences. Further research is required to investigate interventions that might help promote RCTs in learning disabilities.

Research with vulnerable groups is crucial to get their input into public policy design that will directly impact on them. However, there are many methodological and ethical challenges involved in encouraging participation from groups with a wide range of intellectual, cognitive and physical capacities while ensuring that the rights and well-being of participants are protected. Rather than exploring ethical theories, this chapter is a case study describing the practical ethical considerations that were involved in designing and holding a series of focus groups with adult health and social care service users from vulnerable cohorts. It is based on a series of focus groups which the Institute of Public Health (IPH) held with specified cohorts as part of a policy development process on adult safeguarding for the Department of Health (DOH) in Ireland. The four cohorts were people with intellectual disability, cognitive impairments, significant mental health challenges and nursing home residents. This chapter does not describe the findings of the focus groups but outlines the ethical and methodological considerations that arose in designing and conducting this research, and the practical ethical safeguards employed to mitigate risk and comply with Irish and EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) legislation governing health research. It outlines the ethical issues around protecting confidentiality and using incentives to encourage participation, how individuals' capacity to give informed consent was maximized, the risk-assessment and mitigation procedures used to prevent harms arising and the measures put in place to provide follow-up emotional support to participants.

There has been a growing number, though still modest, of organizations in Vietnam context that hire employees with disabilities and build disability inclusive management practices and disability diversity climate for them to engage in their work roles. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how disability inclusive HR practices contribute to work engagement of employees with disabilities working in Vietnam-based information technology (IT) industry.

The research model was tested through the data collected from employees with disabilities and their direct supervisors from IT companies based in Vietnam.

The data analysis revealed that disability inclusive HR practices influenced employees with disabilities to engage in their work activities through organizational identification as a mediator. Moral leadership exhibited a positive interactive effect with disability inclusive HR practices in promoting organizational identification of employees with disabilities and, in turn, their work engagement. In addition, employees’ idiosyncratic deals were found to serve as an individual enhancer for the link between their organizational identification and work engagement.

This research sets a milestone for more empirical inquiries on disability-oriented antecedents at both organizational and individual levels that can foster work engagement of employees with disabilities.