This book is about Trauma-Informed Care (TIC) for people who have intellectual disabilities (ID). The provision of health and social care services is becoming more trauma informed, including in services for people with ID, where the experience of trauma is being increasingly acknowledged. This book addresses a gap in resources to guide those supporting people with ID by showing how services can work in a trauma informed way. Including contributions from authoritative professionals in the field, and a powerful account of abuse from an expert by experience, the book provides an overview of the history which underpins the importance of trauma and TIC, and the impact of trauma on people who have ID. The second part of the book looks at trauma informed services and a growing and diverse range of therapeutic interventions, including positive behavioural support, intensive interaction, cognitive behavioural psychotherapy, dyadic interpersonal psychotherapy, developmental and psychodynamic approaches.

Recent studies have identified that there is a high incidence and prevalence of trauma amongst people with intellectual disabilities which often results in arrested emotional development. Some of this relates to experiences of being restrained or separated from people they know, and some to early traumatic events, such as abandonment or neglect. Historically, most of the consequential emotional difficulties have been labelled as an effect of the disability or more recently, as challenging behaviour. For years psychotherapy has been denied to people with intellectual disabilities who have experienced trauma, on the grounds that they could not benefit from it. While this has proved not to be the case and attempts are being made to redress the balance, individual psychotherapy will always be in short supply. Trauma-informed care in Intellectual Disability will enable support staff to work therapeutically. Written by Dr Pat Frankish, a clinical psychologist with many years of experience in the field of intellectual disability and psychotherapy, whose work is dedicated to the development and growth of Trauma Informed Care as a model of working with people with disabilities.

Much has been written about cognitive development in those who are cognitively impaired. Much is written about attachment for people who don't have disabilities. Yet people with disabilities have suffered discrimination and neglect of their emotional needs, perhaps because the pain of difference cannot be tolerated, perhaps because of lack of will or lack of knowledge. This book aims to help to fill the knowledge gap and to encourage others to overcome their resistance to facing the pain, and will be an important contribution to our understanding of the world of disability and emotional deprivation. In this book - a result of over twenty years experience with people who have disabilities and additional distress as a result of traumatic life experiences - an attempt is made to bring together what we know about early emotional development and the consequences of failure to provide an emotionally nurturing experience, and the results are then applied to people with disabilities.

The FAIT is a simple assessment tool that helps staff working with people with intellectual disabilities to determine the level of emotional development of the distressed individual, thereby allowing for an intervention to be provided at the right level within an emotionally nurturing environment.Based on a 40 minute observation of the individual, and accompanying gradings, the FAIT tool enables identification of the stage of emotional development at which the person's development has become arrested. Once this is established, it becomes possible to work out what kind of interventions will be appropriate to address their emotional needs.The expectation is that individuals who follow this manual will be able to effectively allocate a stage to the person they are assessing and be able to design an appropriate intervention, following up with a reassessment as the intervention progresses. Work with the specific trauma will usually happen in individual or group therapy.

Framework document

This book examines how intellectual disability is affected by stigma and how this stigma has developed. Around two per cent of the world's population have an intellectual disability but their low visibility in many places bears witness to their continuing exclusion from society. This prejudice has an impact on the family of those with an intellectual disability as well as the individual themselves and affects the well-being and life chances of all those involved. This book provides a framework for tackling intellectual disability stigma in institutional processes, media representations and other, less overt, settings. It also highlights the anti-stigma interventions which are already in place and the central role that self-advocacy must play.

Brue’s Essentials Intellectual Disability is a concise, up-to-date overview of intellectual disability evaluation and assessment. This text offers a practical, concise overview of the nature of intellectual disability and adaptive skills functioning in children, adolescents, and adults. Coverage includes the latest information on prevalence, causes, differential diagnoses, behavioral and social concerns, test instruments, and the new DSM-5 diagnostic criteria. The discussion promotes a deeper understanding of the use of assessment data to inform interventions in clinical practice. Designed for easy navigation, each chapter highlights important points and key cautions to allow quick reference without sacrificing depth. A sample assessment report illustrates how findings should be communicated to better inform treatment, giving you a practical reference to ensure comprehensive reporting. In 2013, the DSM-5 conceptualization of intellectual disabilities was significantly changed. It's important for professionals to have access to the most current guidelines from a variety of sources, and this book compiles them all into a single reference.