Page 18 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 1
(Llewellyn & McConnell, 2002) and the Social Support Self Report (Lippold & Burns, 2009; Lunsky & Benson, 1997). While social networks have been mapped differently, the distinction between the categories such as family, friends and professionals has been made consistently. The network can be divided into two areas (e.g. van Asselt-Goverts et al., 2012), the formal network (i.e. the network of professionals) and the informal network (i.e. family, friends, neighbours, colleagues and other acquaintances) and analysed in terms of structural and functional characteristics. Among the structural characteristics are the size of the network and the frequency of interactions with network members. The functional characteristics (i.e. social support) are often divided into practical and emotional support (Lunsky, 2006).
With respect to the structural characteristics of the social networks of people with ID, differences between specific target groups have been investigated (Lippold & Burns, 2009; Widmer, Kempf-Constantin, Robert-Tissot, Lanzi, & Galli Carminati, 2008) and associations made with the type of living situation (Forrester-Jones et al., 2006; McConkey, 2007; Robertson et al., 2001). People with mild ID appear to have more friends (either with or without ID) than people with moderate ID, although the majority of people with mild ID still interact very little with people without ID (Dusseljee, Rijken, Cardol, Curfs, & Groenewegen, 2011). People living in a supported living accommodation seem to have more social contacts than people living in group homes or residential facilities (Forrester-Jones et al., 2006; McConkey, 2007; Robertson et al., 2001). However, their social networks are often small and the only contact with people without ID tends to be with family and professionals (e.g. Lippold & Burns, 2009; Verdonschot et al., 2009). The size of the network found in the literature varies from a median of six members (Robertson et al. 2001) to an average of 11.67 (Lippold & Burns, 2009) and 22 (Forrester-Jones et al., 2006) for people with ID living in the community. To date, the main focus of research on the structural characteristics of social networks has been on the size and composition of the social network. Although this gives relevant information, there are more structural characteristics such as accessibility, length of the relationship, initiation or frequency of contact (Baars, 1994). These characteristics are of importance because they provide insight into the condition and nature of the ties which, in turn, provides information about the possibilities and limitations for that person of his network and the extent to which the person is able to maintain existing contacts and make new contacts (Baars, 1994).
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