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Care Provider Produces Therapy Guide
Specialist care provider Choice Care Group has produced a guide to Intensive Interaction – a new approach to help people with learning disabilities to communicate – which is available to download free of charge from their website.
Intensive interaction is aimed at the most vulnerable groups who are often most excluded, i.e. those with complex needs such as autism, sensory loss, and severe learning disabilities.
The approach aims to improve two-way communication by the individual concerned by responding to selected aspects of their behaviour, with the communication partner alter their voice, gaze and body language in order to join in with the person. In this way they appear less threatening and more interesting to the other person as they begin to respond to and join in with what the person with a learning disability does.
The approach is about teaching the fundamentals of communication and allows for pauses, taking turns, touch, enjoying being with the other person, building the other person’s confidence through repetition and structure and allowing it to develop over time.
Choice has pioneered use of the new treatment over the past 18 months and it has now been successfully implemented in several of its care homes across the south of England.
The guide provides an introduction to Intensive Interaction before giving several case studies of how it has been implemented within Choice Care Group.
Choice clinical psychologist Dr Perry Morrison, said: “Using Intensive Interaction has really made a difference to our service users. By interacting with them on an individual level, we have seen improved communication and a decrease in challenges from the service users concerned.
“We hope this guide may be useful to other care providers who are considering introducing the treatment or to parents and carers of people with learning disabilities who may have perhaps heard of this treatment but need to know more about it.”
The guide can be downloaded below.
