En undersøgelse af socialpædagogisk arbejde med udeboende voksne udviklingshæmmede i tilknytning til et bofællesskab, med udgangspunkt i et brugerperspektiv

This project deals with a group of adults with mental handicaps, living on their own in the community, but receiving support in managing their daily lives from social workers. These social workers are primarily associated with a house-share for 10 adults with mental handicaps who need more extensive care than the target group throughout the day. The target group participates in various activities, e.g. travels abroad arranged by the social workers together with the inhabitants of the house-share, to strengthen the weak social networks of the target group. The research question is: “How do adults with mental handicaps living on their own in the community experience the support they receive in their own home from social workers? Is the support and the framework within which it takes place seen as an adequate fulfillment of their experienced needs?” This is investigated by conducting a number of group interviews, starting by interviewing two groups of clients, followed by two groups of social workers, and finally one group consisting of two leaders. The order is important, since the aim of the interviews with the staff and leaders are to comment on the interviews with the target group, and this setting is also supposed to trigger organizational learning. This method is denoted BIKVA (from Danish: Brugerinddragelse i kvalitetsvurdering). The results of the analysis substantiated that the target group were generally quite satisfied with the support they received, especially when it was experienced as “being their own choice” to receive it. The inhabitants in the house-share were to some extent seen as adequate companionship for various activities (travel etc.), as an alternative to loneliness. Yet some clients would rather spend more time with somebody more in alignment with their own age and level of handicap. Another finding was, that the target group, which in some ways had a good understanding of the organizational frames, in other ways did not fully understand these. A frequent example was surprise of the fact that the target group members have to pay for the social workers when they accompany them on travels. Another research issue was whether the clients’ expressed opinions presented to the staff/leaders could influence the future support as a result of organizational learning. The findings support this, judged from the views expressed by the staff during the interview, partly as a result of understanding what the clients did not understand. Finally, the BIKVA method is found to be useful in a number of instances, e.g. for students in their studies of professional practice.