Team funded to study communication needs of intellectually disabled

UC academic Dr Dean Sutherland (Health Sciences Centre) is part of a national research team awarded $150,000 funding from the Health Research Council of New Zealand (HRC) to assess the need for communication intervention for adults with intellectual disability.

The research collaboration, led by Professor Jeff Sigafoos (Victoria University of Wellington) and including Dr Brigit Mirfin-Veith and Paul Milner (Donald Beasley Institute, Dunedin), will use the HRC grant to carry out a 12-month feasibility study to discover the level of need for augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) intervention among that population group.

Dr Sutherland said severe communication impairment often went hand in hand with profound intellectual disabilities and, without an effective means of communication, many affected adults were at risk of serious health-related complications and a greatly diminished quality of life.

“Many adults with intellectual disabilities are suffering in silence a lot of the time for lack of ability to communicate even their most basic wants and needs,” he said.

Individuals with intellectual disabilities and severe communication impairment are candidates for AAC, an area of clinical practice that focuses on establishing effective communication through the use of non-speech modes such as manual signs, picture-based communication boards, and/or electronic speech-generating devices.

However, because the intervention is a fairly recent development in allied health, the researchers suspect that many New Zealanders, especially adults, have not received, and are not receiving, effective AAC help.

“Historically those with intellectual disabilities were housed in institutions but over recent decades many have moved to community-based housing. The communication demands in these changing environments can be quite different and we predict there will be a big need for communication support in these populations,” Dr Sutherland said.

The research group will use an Internet-based survey aimed at service providers and caregivers to identify the number of adults with intellectual disability who are candidates for AAC and assess the nature of their communication impairments and associated intervention needs, document the extent to which effective AAC intervention is currently being provided, and determine the extent to which direct-care staff have the expertise to provide effective AAC support.

One of the key objectives of the feasibility study is to determine the training needs of staff, which will be the focus of a further study.

“The project is about educating and sharing knowledge with the people that are communicating with adults with intellectual disabilities on a regular basis. Research that informs evidence-based practice in AAC intervention for these adults is likely to improve their quality of life and prevent many health-related problems that are associated with severe communication impairment,” said Dr Sutherland.