Interdisciplinary training for staff working with people with profound and multiple learning disabilities

Abstract

Traditionally, teachers, therapists, nurses and social workers have separate training which fits them each for special and defined roles in their work with people with learning disabilities. In reality, these roles, at least, are complementary and in many cases overlap considerably. In schools and adult centres, professionals are expected to work in what are termed ‘multidisciplinary teams’, which implies that they have the desire and the ability to share and collaborate, using the expertise born from their individual disciplines to meet all the needs of the people in their care. There is a long history of examples of how difficult it is to achieve this and a huge literature base on the reasons why this might be so (Lacey&Lomas, 1993). There are, however, remarkably few research studies demonstrating the effects of working together across disciplines and even fewer which address aspects of training members of multidisciplinary teams, although shared learning has provoked much interest, especially in health and care related contexts. This paper is concerned with a discussion of the importance of training members of multidisciplinary teams together and in demonstrating how this was achieved in one university department. This was a project set up in 1992 aimed at planning, implementing and evaluating an interdisciplinary course for staff who work with people with profound and multiple learning disabilities. There have been four cohorts of students, involving more than 100 students who came from a variety of education, health, social services and voluntary settings. Most were trained professionals but some were untrained. They studied together, although there are a variety of different levels of award to accommodate the differences in academic experience.

Key Words:

• Staff training
• special education
• interprofessional