Page 46 - Social networks of people with mild intellectual disabilities: characteristics and interventions

Chapter 2
be tailored to the strengths and weaknesses of the individual’s social network. Professionals should, for example (a) avoid overburdening the social network (Oudijk, de Boer, Woittiez, Timmermans, & de Klerk, 2010) and therefore adopt interventions aimed at expanding and improving the individual’s social network (van Asselt-Goverts et al., 2014) rather than simply increasing the frequency of contact; (b) investigate the reasons for a client being the main initiator of contact or perceiving him/herself to be the main initiator of contact; (c) stimulate client contact with neighbours, including neighbours without ID (van Alphen, Dijker, van den Borne, & Curfs, 2010); and (d) stimulate clients to make new acquaintances and friends via participation in the community, employment, school, the neighbourhood, clubs, the internet and going out (van Asselt-Goverts et al., 2014; McConkey & Collins, 2010).
A fourth noteworthy finding is that the meeting of the need for connection on the part of the participants in our study was perceived to be low, particularly with respect to the other functional characteristics we examined. People with mild ID have – just as other people – this need to belong, find support and connect with others on the basis of shared interests, values and backgrounds (Baars, 1994). To promote such a connection, it is therefore recommended that greater attention be paid to the interests of a client and greater effort be expended to bring people with similar interests together (van Asselt-Goverts et al., 2014; Lunsky, 2006).
At this point, some possible limitations on the present study should be mentioned. First, the focus of our study was on young adults with mild ID living independently. This means that the present results cannot be generalized to other target groups like older clients, clients with a different degree of ID or clients living in a different type of accommodation. Second, psychometric data on the reliability and validity of using the MSNA with people with ID are still lacking. Nevertheless, the MSNA has been used with different research populations, including people with psychiatric problems (Baars, 1994), fibromyalgia patients (Bolwijn, van Santen-Hoeufft, Baars, Kaplan, & van der Linden, 1996) and Kenyan street children (Ayuku, Kaplan, Baars, & de Vries, 2004). In the present study, the MSNA also appeared to be a useful instrument for systematically mapping the social networks of people with mild ID. Compared to some other instruments (e.g. the Social Network Map, Robertson et al., 2001) the adapted form of the MSNA which we used gives a large amount of information on both the structural and functional characteristics of the social networks. Our participants were able to answer the questions, and it
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