The continuing imperative for interdisciplinary work in learning disability

Abstract

Welcome to the March issue of BJLD, this is my first editorial as the new incoming editor, and my first task is to record a note of personal thanks to the work of Professor Duncan Mitchell, who has demonstrated remarkable stewardship, steering BJLD through some difficult times. I have to say that I am delighted, as well as being very proud to be taking over as Editor of British Journal of Learning Disabilities, taking place at a culminating point in my career. Having recently taken early retirement, I have been awarded an Emeritus Professorship at the University of Hertfordshire and have also become Honorary Professor of Learning Disabilities at the Hertfordshire Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust. I now work part time as Professor of Learning Disabilities at the Institute for Practice, Interdisciplinary Research and Enterprise, University of West London. I have a portfolio of activity focused entirely on research and scholarly activity, thus, taking over the editorship of BJLD contributes to a cogent area of activity for at least the next 3 years. In this, my first editorial for BJLD, I have the privilege to introduce a wide range of papers, and two case histories, and this has reminded me of the continuing importance of interdisciplinary work in the field of learning disabilities. In the first paper, Katrina Holmes presents a fascinating paper that explores the positive and negative experiences of three people with learning disabilities who have used social networking sites. Next, Larry Lee and Alexander Carson explore practice that attempts to manage acts of intimate violence perpetrated by students with learning difficulties in a specialist college setting. Laura Shewan and colleagues present a paper on what parents with learning disabilities understood about their disability, and how they perceived this impacted on their parenting role. Their study suggests that these parents experienced some difficulties; however, these tended to be related to specific tasks only. Following a similar theme on parenthood Sheila Gould and Karen Dodd identify, a well-recognised risk of parents with learning disabilities that of having their children removed. She asserts that little research has investigated the impact of this on these parents. Her paper explores the perceptions of nine mothers with mild learning disabilities, and their experiences of having had their children removed. Next, Barbara Hurtado describes the experience of involving people with learning disabilities and additional needs in the recruitment of staff. She identifies that a significant amount of support, as well as additional time and adaptations to the interviewing and scrutinising processes was necessary in order to ensure that people with learning disabilities could contribute meaningfully. In the next paper, Stefanie Rubbert and colleagues explore concerns about the effectiveness of services offered to people with learning disabilities who were overweight. They report on the development of an interdisciplinary body awareness group that they established. Next, Helga Fasching from Austria explores how career counselling at school contributed to supporting inclusive transition processes from school to regular vocational training and occupation for school-leavers with an intellectual disability. And in a similar theme, Joanne Skellern and Geoff Astbury research issues of paid employment for people with learning disabilities. Their work critically examines the experience of gaining employment from multiple perspectives, including students with learning disabilities, parents, education staff and employers. In the penultimate case study by Leigh Hagan and Helen Thompson, they report on the impact of using a Speech Generating Device [SGD] on the communication abilities of a nonverbal individual with a moderate learning disability. Their findings reveal that using the SGD for this individual resulted in improvements in expressive communication abilities and pragmatic skills that included topic maintenance, taking conversational turns and reduced communication breakdown. The clinical implications of this intervention are discussed. In the final paper,