Thesis-1998-Palmer.pdf (4.94 MB)
Enforced isolation: a study of the needs of dual sensory impaired people living in Leicestershire
thesis
posted on 2017-10-09, 15:45 authored by Beryl H. PalmerIn 1989, a report entitled Breaking Through highlighted the failure of Local Authorities to address
the needs of deafblind people, about whom little is known. This study aimed to identify dual sensory
impaired people in Leicestershire, and to examine the needs of adults and older dual sensory
impaired people in the light of existing theory, knowledge, policy and service provision. A two stage
approach was adopted. The first stage .comprised of a quantitative survey; a screening sheet was
devised to identify individuals and widely distributed amongst local statutory and voluntary agencies
and advertised to the public. A total of 1462 people were identified. This figure is equivalent to 169
per 100,000, over four times higher than earlier local studies had found. The majority were over 75
years of age, adventitiously impaired and relied on residual hearing and sight for communication.
These findings challenge the stereotype of a deafblind person and point to changes in epidemiology
in recent years. The second stage comprised of a qualitative survey of 24 adults and older dual
sensory impaired people. Interviewees were asked about their daily difficulties and about their use of
health and social care services. They were found to be an extremely heterogeneous group with very
varied life experiences and situations. However several common themes emerged including the need
for improved access to information, employment (for adults), education, social and leisure activities,
and general community facilities. Some experienced lives devoid of meaningful activity and quite
severe isolation. They were disadvantaged by the medical model and single sensory approach of
health and social care service providers. On the basis of the findings a series of suggestions to
improve current health and social care service provision were made. These included improvements to
mainstream services such as adopting an empowering approach, recognising the existence of dual
sensory impaired people, undertaking health promotion work, adopting a care management
approach, undertaking staff training, improving co-ordination, and ensuring access to all services. In
addition, the need to develop some specialist local resources was identified.
History
School
- Social Sciences
Department
- Communication, Media, Social and Policy Studies
Publisher
© Beryl Helen PalmerPublisher statement
This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/Publication date
1998Notes
A Master's Thesis. Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Master of Philosophy at Loughborough University.Language
- en