“Stop talking about my disability, I am a mother”: Adapting video interaction guidance to increase sensitive parenting in a young mother with intellectual disability

Abstract

Accessible Summary Parents with intellectual disabilities often have their children placed under child protection. People with intellectual disabilities can find it difficult to access universal parenting programmes and can find it difficult to get professional help for their problems. Video Interaction Guidance is an approach designed to help parents care for their children. This case study shows that Video Interaction Guidance really helped a young mother with intellectual disability. AbstractBackgroundParenting can be challenging for people with intellectual disabilities. The nature of the parents' intellectual disability as well as past experiences of institutionalisation, insensitive care and inadequate support can interfere with parents' capacity to provide responsive and appropriate parenting to their own children. This can result in parents with intellectual disabilities being investigated under child protection procedures. There is little evidence for parenting interventions to improve attachment in parents with intellectual disability.MethodThis is a case report of “Sarah,” a young mother with mild intellectual disability, whose children were placed on the child protection register. A behavioural video‐feedback approach that focused on Sarah's strengths, Video Interaction Guidance, was adapted to Sarah's intellectual disability.ResultsSarah demonstrated a noticeable increase in the frequency of sensitive interactions with her children as well as increased engagement with support services and request for more instructional parenting input.ConclusionThis study demonstrates the feasibility of using Video Interaction Guidance with parents with an intellectual disability and offers suggestions on adapting the intervention to suit individual parents' needs. Further systematic research is, however, necessary to prove the effectiveness of this approach.