The role of professionals in strengthening social relations of adults with a disability in independent supported living: Practices and influencing factors

ABSTRACT

Background: Professionals play an important role in supporting the social relations of persons with a disability. This study looks at professional practices supporting or strengthening social relations of persons in independent supported living, by integrating the perspectives of adults with a disability, network members and professionals.

Method: Fifty-one semi-structured interviews were carried out.

Results: Identified practices were: facilitating social situations, connecting with current and new network members, getting to know the person with a disability really well, delivering person-directed work, being a sounding board, being a safety net, working with an empowering attitude, seeing and exploiting opportunities. Influencing factors were related to the person with a disability, the professional, the network members and the broader environment.

Conclusion: Identified practices were small actions rather than structured or programmatic interventions. An unique combination and complex interplay of factors was found within each case, where negative factors could be counterbalanced by positive factors.

KEYWORDS:

• Adults with a disability
• social relations
• practices of professionals
• independent supported living
• social networks

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Nathalie Van Limbergen, Leila Zvar and Jana Deckers for their contribution to the data collection by interviewing the participants in the context of their master thesis. Furthermore, we are grateful to the professionals of the thematic project group and of the Academic Workplace Inclusion and Support for their valuable input during the whole process of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by KU Leuven.