Visual Functioning of Persons With Severe and Profound Intellectual Disabilities: Observations by Direct Support Workers and Staff Members and Information Available in Personal Files

Despite the high prevalence of visual impairments in persons with severe or profound intellectual disability (ID), often a formal diagnosisis unavailable. Direct support workers and staff members have access to the information of the visual functioning through the personalfiles and build knowledge based on their own experiences. In order to provide individualized and high quality support in daily life, theaccuracy and availability of this information of the visual functioning is essential. This study investigates the knowledge of direct supportworkers and staff members on the visual functioning of their clients and the written information available in the personalfiles. It is investi-gated to what extent they do agree on their knowledge and how certain direct support workers and staff members are about their knowl-edge on the visual functioning. Additionally is investigated to what extent the information available in supportfiles is based on formalassessment. For 104 clients with severe or profound ID a direct support worker and a staff memberfilled in a questionnaire about theirvisual functioning. Next, the personalfiles were analyzed. Direct support workers and staff members respond significantly differently onthe questions on the impaired visual functions. Direct support workers rate the certainty level of their knowledge on their clients’visualfunctions higher than staff members. The personalfiles lack information on the visual functioning. If information is available, it is mostlybased on subjective impressions. The knowledge of direct support workers and staff members and the information available in the per-sonalfiles provide no comprehensive picture of the visual functioning of the persons with severe or profound ID.

Publication year:2019

BOF-keylabel:yes

IOF-keylabel:yes

BOF-publication weight:0.1

CSS-citation score:1

Authors from:Private, Higher Education

Accessibility:Open