‘Reflecting or frozen?’ The impact of Covid-19 on art therapists working with people with a learning disability

ABSTRACT

Background

A series of online practice development discussions were held during the Covid-19 pandemic by the Art Therapy and Learning Disability Professional Support Group of the British Association of Art Therapists (formerly known as the Special Interest Group).

Aims

(1) To capture the experiences of art therapists living through and working with this population during the global pandemic; (2) To describe the barriers and facilitators for online art therapy with people with a learning disability.

Methods

An anonymised, hand-written record was made during six 60-minute Zoom sessions. The data was transferred to an Excel database. Reflexive thematic analysis was conducted.

Results

The resultant themes and thematic map are shared in this paper. The themes are: (A) The pandemic as leveller. (B) The joy and jeopardy of working online. (C) Art after the eclipse. (D) The function of the professional support group. (E) Insight and understanding to meet client diversity.

Conclusions

Stimulated by the national restrictions imposed due to the pandemic, art therapy practice changed at an unprecedented pace. Online art therapy for people with a learning disability may provide a viable alternative to face-to-face art therapy. The BAAT Professional Support Group provides an important peer-network for art therapists and could become a practice-based research hub.

Implications

Further research is needed to develop best-practice online art therapy; this must include experts by experience as co-researchers. Additional training will be needed for art therapists to practice safely and confidently online.

Plain-language summary

In 2020, the coronavirus made many people across the world sick, some people died. In the UK, our government asked us to stay at home to help to stop the virus spreading. Lots of things changed very suddenly – activities, hobbies and therapy were stopped.

This meant that people with a learning disability were not able to keep coming to their art therapy sessions. Art therapists across the UK met on the internet, using a video-chat, to talk about what changes they had made in their clinical practice, whether they were able to keep therapy going during the pandemic and how they felt about the changes.

We wanted to understand:

(1) Art therapists' experiences during the pandemic.

(2) What's helped and what's gotten in the way when art therapists have worked online with people with a learning disability.

This piece of research uses a qualitative research procedure called 'thematic analysis' to make sense of different people's views. Thematic analysis is a systematic way of organising and interpreting large volumes of information, called 'data'. In this research, the data is people's words, which were written down live during the six video-chat meetings. Using thematic analysis helps us to find patterns in the data where people have a similar or different view. These patterns are called: 'themes'. The themes gave us a concise record of a broad range of people's views.

We found five key themes: (A) The pandemic as leveller. (B) The joy and jeopardy of working online. (C) Art after the eclipse. (D) The function of the professional support group. (E) Insight and understanding to meet client diversity.

Online art therapy might help some people with a learning disability, but we need more research and training. Art therapists value peer-support. Our peer-support group could help to develop more robust research projects.

Video Abstract

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© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group

KEYWORDS:

• Learning disability
• art therapy
• online therapy
• thematic analysis
• peer-support
• Covid-19

Supplementary Material

Miro thematic diagrams and mapping process: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_kkUzqms=/

Mala-gram session diagrams: https://prezi.com/i/jqqd1wxp7nvy/mala-gram-for-3-sessions-of-ld-sig/.

Please note that these links are time-limited.

Acknowledgements

We wish to thank the members of the Art Therapy & Learning Disability Professional Support Group of The British Association of Art Therapy.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

N. Power

N. Power is currently Head of Arts Therapies for Bedfordshire Adult Mental Health & Learning Disability Services, part of East London NHS Foundation Trust. She is a coordinator of the BAAT Art Therapy & Learning Disability Professional Support Group. She is a member of the editorial board for the Irish Journal of Creative Arts Therapies – Polyphony.

R. Dolby

R. Dolby is an art therapist and graduate of University of Hertfordshire. She is a trauma-informed practitioner and is currently working for a social justice organisation, The Cambridge Acorn Project, as an Art Therapist and Wellbeing Lead in both primary and secondary schools.

D. Thorne

D. Thorne is an artist and art therapist with a Mentalization-based influence. He currently works for the Special Learning Disabilities Service within Hertfordshire Partnership University Foundation NHS Trust. He is also a visiting lecturer and experiential module facilitator at the University of Hertfordshire.