Intensive Interaction: an approach that sits across disciplines - its greatest strength ... and its greatest weakness?
With my most recent Blogs focusing on linking Intensive Interaction to established psychological theories and therapeutic models, it has increasingly dawned on me that I think that this highlights one of the approaches greatest strengths, but also one of its greatest weaknesses.
In other Blogs I have written about Intensive interaction being developed through the same practices, but successfully fulfilling different educational, social or therapeutic functions depending on the context or aims of its use e.g.:
- a 'Social Inclusion' process* - evidenced in shorter term improvements in sociability as both recipient (e.g. a person with an LD, autism, or as is increasingly reported, people with late stage dementia) and practitioner develop and improve their social engagement and rapport.
- a 'developmental process'* - seen in the longer term acquisition/extension of social skills and understandings, as new social experiences are accommodated and new learning takes place.
- and, as I have written recently, a psychological or therapeutic process (Berry et al, 2013) which can help to develop psychological contact and emotional connectedness for people who are difficult to reach and/or in emotional distress. (Here in Leeds, when and where relevant, we include personalised Intensive Interaction guidelines into the ‘proactive strategies’ section of Positive Behaviour Support (PBS) plans i.e. to train staff/carers to work 'at the level of the antecedent', thus negating a person's need to resort to any challenging communication behaviours).
So, one approach, many uses - and as I allude to above, I think this is a great strength of the approach - with all these uses, aims, contextualised functions being obviously positive, and the outcomes highly plausible and increasingly well evidenced.
But this is where I think it sometimes gets difficult. This breadth of use and function could I think be identified as a weakness for Intensive Interaction, in that the approach is therefore not 'owned' i.e. defined, developed and disseminated, by one key discipline. Instead it sits across many disciplines - special education, speech & language therapy, social or specialised care, psychology, occupational therapy, LD nursing, disability studies, etc.; with no discipline being the focused intellectual hub for, and thus the key driving force behind, the approach.
However, all of the discipline or domains mentioned above are actually human intellectual constructs that help us individually give order to what in reality is a complex, interrelated and conceptually overlapping human and social world. Sometimes that constructed conceptual ordering (which takes place inside our heads and is projected out onto the world) gives us a cognitive framework within which we can create meaning; but sometimes it tricks us into thinking that there are clear intellectual boundaries between all these domains of understanding - and of course, in the 'real' real world, as opposed to our individual cognitively constructed world, there aren't.
Intensive Interaction sits between all these disciplines because our work, and the needs of all our different people, sit between them - it is our job as Intensive Interaction advocates and practitioners to think outside our constraining disciplinary boxes, and look at the bigger picture. We therefore need to continuously and actively work together to counteract the lack of a single disciplinary focus (which remember, is also a great strength), and collectively make the approach more accepted and understood whenever and wherever it is need.
*Firth, G. (2009) ‘A Dual Aspect Process Model of Intensive Interaction’, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(1), p.45-49.
But this is where I think it sometimes gets difficult. This breadth of use and function could I think be identified as a weakness for Intensive Interaction, in that the approach is therefore not 'owned' i.e. defined, developed and disseminated, by one key discipline. Instead it sits across many disciplines - special education, speech & language therapy, social or specialised care, psychology, occupational therapy, LD nursing, disability studies, etc.; with no discipline being the focused intellectual hub for, and thus the key driving force behind, the approach.
However, all of the discipline or domains mentioned above are actually human intellectual constructs that help us individually give order to what in reality is a complex, interrelated and conceptually overlapping human and social world. Sometimes that constructed conceptual ordering (which takes place inside our heads and is projected out onto the world) gives us a cognitive framework within which we can create meaning; but sometimes it tricks us into thinking that there are clear intellectual boundaries between all these domains of understanding - and of course, in the 'real' real world, as opposed to our individual cognitively constructed world, there aren't.
Intensive Interaction sits between all these disciplines because our work, and the needs of all our different people, sit between them - it is our job as Intensive Interaction advocates and practitioners to think outside our constraining disciplinary boxes, and look at the bigger picture. We therefore need to continuously and actively work together to counteract the lack of a single disciplinary focus (which remember, is also a great strength), and collectively make the approach more accepted and understood whenever and wherever it is need.
*Firth, G. (2009) ‘A Dual Aspect Process Model of Intensive Interaction’, British Journal of Learning Disabilities, 37(1), p.45-49.
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